


You're Just Too Good To Be True

by shinealightonme



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: 10 things I Hate About You - Freeform, Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, Author Does Not Like Joseph Kavinsky, Bad Matchmaking, Lies, M/M, Minor Richard Gansey III/Blue Sargent, Past Child Abuse, Secrets, do I get to call it a high school AU if they are high schoolers in canon, why would anyone ever use the normal matchmaking tag when bad matchmaking is an option
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-05-20 22:18:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 30,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14903139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinealightonme/pseuds/shinealightonme
Summary: Blue likes Gansey. Gansey likes Blue. But Gansey can't date Blue until his best friend finds a boyfriend. Who could possibly be brave enough -- or desperate enough -- to date Ronan Lynch?





	1. those damn Dawson's river kids sleeping in each other's beds

**Author's Note:**

> All thanks to Z, who responded to my dumb idea for a 10 Things I Hate About You AU not with the derision I deserved but with the gleeful request that RONAN CRIES AFTER READING A POEM. I regret only that I could not make that happen. I am weak and mortal, I speak of the teen comedy AU who is to come after me, whose grammar I am not worthy to beta, who is actually a comedy instead of whatever-the-fuck this is.
> 
> This story is completed in its entirety, I am merely giving myself the gift of not having to proof and format it all in one go. Tags reflect the story as a whole; rating will not change and not every character/subject tagged herein applies to every chapter. You can start it now with the knowledge that, barring unforeseen circumstances, I will post a chapter a day for eight days. Or you can wait until it's all up, I will not be offended.
> 
> You don't need to have seen 10 Things I Hate About You to understand this (well, except for the chapter titles), but given the choice to watch 10 Things I Hate About You, why wouldn't you?

"I hear you're pretty smart."

Adam doesn't look up from his notebook. If he could afford to take a break from studying, he would use it for something better than chatting with a stranger. "I'm not going to do your homework for you."

"Wow, you had that lined up and ready to go. People really ask you to do their homework?"

"They used to." Adam glares at the girl who's standing next to his table. "I think word got around that I'm a jerk."

"Yeah, I heard that, too." His glare does not run her off; in fact, she sits down at the table across from him. He ought to be happy about that. She's cute, and she's rocking a sort of bohemian look that he could be into, if he had the time to be into anything. "I'd rather fail my homework on my own terms."

"Good for you." Adam takes a bite of his sandwich, which has gone largely ignored during his studying. "Why are we having this conversation?"

She bites her lip, like words are about to come out of her mouth and she's not sure he'll like what they are.

Eventually she says, "I want your advice on something."

"You don't even know me."

"You're Adam, right? I'm Blue." She holds her hand out to him.

He stares at her for a second before gesturing with his pen and his sandwich: _look, no hands_.

But she doesn't back down, and as irritating as that is, Adam can respect it. He sets his pen down long enough to shake her hand.

"Nice meeting you," Blue says. "I need your help."

Adam sighs. He could get up and leave, maybe, but it would take him a minute to get all his stuff together and at least a few minutes more to find somewhere else he can study and eat in peace. It'll probably be faster to hear her out and get rid of her. It's not like he's any good at giving people advice; she'll leave as soon as he opens his mouth.

"All right."

"So, I asked this guy out. On a date." Blue pauses, blushing.

"Congratulations."

"I don't need _sarcasm_."

"Then you're in the wrong place," Adam says. "But I'm only half sarcastic. If you managed to say the words _will you go out with me_ , you're already ahead of ninety percent of our peers. Nice blow to gender norms, by the way."

"That was what I thought, too! And -- the guy, he thought it was cool. He likes me back."

"I fail to see where any of this merits harassing strangers in the cafeteria."

"He said no. Because his friend is single, and I guess sort of jealous and going through a rough time, and he thought if he got a girlfriend it wouldn't be fair to his friend."

"You really want my advice?"

Blue squints at him, already knowing she won't like it, but she nods anyway.

"When you ask a guy out and he says _no_ , he's not into you. Anything after 'no' is an excuse."

"He _does_ like me," Blue says. "He told me so."

"Yeah, I've heard a lot of guys say a lot of things." That is something of an exaggeration. Adam can't describe the number of guys he's hooked up with as _a lot_ , and it's not like he wanted any of them to go on a _date_ with him, anyway. But Blue doesn't need his sob story, she needs to quit deluding herself.

"He's not like that," she insists. "He wouldn't lie to me."

"Then he's telling the truth when he says, _no thanks_."

"You're annoying, you know that?"

Adam takes another bite of his sandwich in lieu of answering.

"If I admit you have a point, can we move on to the actual part I want advice about?" Blue asks, and Adam looks wistfully at his notes. He has a feeling he's not going to get any more work done this lunch period.

"Fine."

"I want to find someone to set his friend up with," Blue says.

"That is so fucked up," Adam says.

"It doesn't have to be -- dirty, or anything," Blue says. "Honestly his friend really _could_ use one night out where he has some fun. And then he wouldn't have to be jealous."

"Before we move on I'm going to need you to concede that this is creepy."

Blue scowls. "So you aren't going to help me."

Adam is interested in spite of himself. He wouldn't have figured Blue as the type for sketchy favors. It probably says something bad about him, that the dubious morality of the situation makes it more intriguing. "I didn't say that. I just want you to admit that you're doing something creepy."

Blue holds her breath before letting it out in a sigh. "Yes, fine, I admit it's sort of creepy."

"Very creepy."

"But it doesn't matter since I can't find anyone willing to go out with him. Even for one night. _That's_ where I need help."

"Matchmaking is not in my wheelhouse," Adam says. "But I believe the traditional thing is to drag him on a double date with one of your friends."

"None of my friends would go for it," Blue says. "I asked."

"Did you tell them about how _honest_ your boyfriend is?" Blue glares daggers at him. "How bad could this date be, really?"

"The words 'not if he was the last living human on earth' came up a lot," Blue says.

Adam feels a surprising shot of sympathy for this poor unnamed friend, so _unwanted_ that even the stubborn girl in front of him couldn't badger or bully someone into spending a couple of hours in his company.

Maybe he should try to help.

"Who is he, anyway?" Adam asks, and at Blue's obvious hesitation, "I can't help if I don't know who we're talking about."

Slowly, like she has to drag the words out of herself, Blue says, "Ronan Lynch."

Adam doesn't start laughing _immediately_ , but only because he spends the first second or two after Blue's pronouncement marveling at the speed with which his meager stores of empathy had dried up. Had he really felt bad for _poor, lonely Ronan Lynch?_ He tries not to grin at the thought, but it's hard.

Blue frowns at him, "it's not funny!" and of course that only sets Adam over the edge into real laughter.

"Trust me, it is," Adam says. "You -- what, you asked out Gansey?" Adam knows Gansey, because everybody knows Gansey; he's that level of popular where everyone knows things about him and can remember That Time He Talked To Them In The Hallway, but he doesn't have a clique or a group that he belongs to, per se. It's just him and Ronan Lynch, who is not so much popular as _infamous_. "And he said he wouldn't go out with you unless you could find a girlfriend for Ronan?"

"A boyfriend," Blue corrects him, and fair enough; Adam of all people shouldn't make assumptions. "And he didn't _ask_ me to, I just thought that if I could -- "

"Except none of your friends would do it." Adam smiles at her. It's not a very nice smile, but it's the only one he has. "The good news is, you have very sane friends."

"I have very _cowardly_ friends, and I'm deeply ashamed for all of them."

"Well, if your friends won't do it you could try just accosting people in the cafeteria -- "

He freezes.

Blue, to her credit, raises her chin and doesn't try to break eye contact, even though Adam can tell that his expression has turned grim.

He's not mad at her, or not only mad at her. Mostly he's mad at _himself_ , that he took so damn long to tell what she was getting at. Let himself get distracted mocking Blue, and mocking Ronan Lynch, and didn't pay attention to what was happening in front of him. He's lucky, that the only price he'll pay is embarrassment.

"That was a nice line." His voice is frigid. " _I need your advice_. I guess I was supposed to be flattered?"

Blue lifts her shoulders defiantly. "Well, if I'd come up to you and just said outright, _would you go on a date with Ronan Lynch_ , what would you have said?"

"The same thing I'm saying now: hell no. Though I wouldn't have added _screw you_. That's because you tried to fuck with my head."

"Oh, but it's fine when you fuck with someone's head?" Blue crosses her arms. " 'This is creepy, please tell me more, tell me who it is so I can laugh at him.' "

Adam doesn't have the high ground. He doesn't _need_ it. His game has always been survival.

He stands up, one hand on his backpack, and says before he goes: "You know what? I work three jobs after school, I'm on the Dean's list, I get four hours of sleep a night, and I just got volunteered to build sets for the school play, so I excuse me if I don't waste any of my precious time crying over your inability to go on a date with some guy you think is dreamy. Leave. Me. Alone."

-

He would have bet anything that that would be the last he saw of Blue.

He would have lost that bet, so maybe it's just as well he doesn't have anyone he can talk to about these things, anyway.

"Mr. Whelk told us that the drama club was still looking for help with set construction." Gansey is obliviously, inappropriately chipper: Adam is staring down at him from the stage, hammer in hand, and Blue is a few feet behind Gansey with her arms crossed and glaring at Adam like she's daring him to say something, and Ronan -- _poor, lonely, going through a rough time_ Ronan Lynch -- is loitering by the theater door looking bored out of his mind.

But never mind all that -- Gansey is beaming like there's nothing else he'd rather do in his free time than manual labor for a club that he isn't even a member of.

"Really." Adam doesn't aim the question at Gansey, but directs it, unyielding, at Blue. "And you decided you wanted to help out. Selflessly."

Blue lifts her chin up, too high; she clearly learned her intimidation body language from someone much taller than she is, because it just looks comical on her. "I think it's disgusting that this is the twenty-first century and we're staging on Taming of the Shrew," and Adam has to agree she has a point. He's not even a woman and hearing _thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper_ while the actors were rehearsing around him was _super awkward_. "But since we are I figured I could prove that women know how to use power tools."

"Uh-huh. And _do_ you know how to use power tools?"

"I can learn."

"I'll show you," Gansey offers. He gazes at her with the kind of look that, if he's honestly trying to put her in the friendzone, isn't doing either of them any favors.

"Great." Blue doesn't quite smile at him, but her face goes soft and warm for a split second, the first time Adam has seen her that she hasn't looked ready to charge into battle. Then she looks back up at him on the stage, and yup, the war paint is back on. "Ronan, I'm sure that Adam could use your help with something," and his glare slides right off of her.

It's a while before he can get Blue alone. Gansey is wholeheartedly enthusiastic about the project now that he's a part of it, and he wants to know everything that Adam has done so far (not much), everything they have to work with (not enough), and what the plan is for the rest of it (not determined). Blue invests herself deeply in putting hands on every tool the drama club has at its disposal, either to keep Adam at bay or to do her part for feminist representation. Ronan lurks at the edge of the stage, barely not in the group. Adam wishes he would just leave already if he's going to do it, instead of sticking around first to make his life harder.

But eventually Gansey goes to get something out of the back and Ronan's sequestered himself in the wings of the stage and Adam manages to catch Blue in the auditorium before she can eel away.

"What the hell, Blue."

"You said you needed help with the sets for the play."

"That's _not_ what I said and you know it."

"Fine, you didn't say it, but you _do_ need help. You don't even have a plan!"

"Do not criticize my work while you're -- "

"While I'm what?" Blue challenges, and Adam grinds his teeth, because he doesn't want to say it, all of this is too stupid to put into words. "Seriously, what's the problem? The sets get done and you two can get to know each other. Maybe you'll fall in love."

"Yeah, because _that's_ going to happen."

"Honestly? It might. You're perfect for each other, you're both assholes."

"You want my help and this is how you talk to me?"

"Who's helping who, here? We're going to get this project done way faster with four people than with one, and if you use some of that extra free time to ask Ronan out, what could it hurt?"

"You may not have noticed this," Adam says, overenunciating his words to be obnoxious, "but he does not like me."

"He doesn't like anyone, it's not all about you. Besides, he doesn't need to go out with you. It's still progress if someone hits on him, right? Because he'll know. You know. That he has options."

Adam stares at her. "What did you do?"

"I didn't do anything."

"You're rationalizing like crazy right now. What did you do?"

Blue bites her lip, trying not to answer, except she so clearly wants to tell someone and Adam is, if not an excited audience, at least a captive one. "I might have kissed Gansey. He might have kissed me back. It might be too late to be just friends."

Adam sighs. "This is going to blow up in your face."

"Remember how we decided that I don't _actually_ want your advice?"

Adam's not convinced that they'll finish the sets any faster together than he would on his own, and certainly not in a quarter of the time, as Blue has suggested. He has no such faith in committees in general, or in Blue or Gansey or Ronan's particular usefulness. But at the very least they can help carry heavy things, and it would be nice to go to his job not already sore and exhausted.

"You three can help me with sets," Adam says, and Blue straightens up, looks at him with such complete and utter joy that for a second he's jealous of Gansey. "But you have to work around my schedule. I'm not missing any shifts at work."

"And you'll talk to Ronan?"

"I'll talk to him, that's it. Okay?"

"Deal."

Gansey arrives back in at the theater, "the art teacher had a bunch of paint she said we could use!" and Adam's shoulders tighten. When he'd asked the art teacher she'd said she didn't have anything she could spare.

He almost snaps at Gansey, _you're getting ahead of yourself,_ and then he decides he might as well leave before he says anything nasty. It's not like Blue is going to mind.

He hops back up onto the stage and pokes around the wings until he finds Ronan holding a cordless drill.

"Do you know how to use that?"

Ronan holds the drill up by his face and switches it on without looking away from Adam.

Adam waits until the high loud whir comes to an end.

"So that's a no."

Another whir.

He's going to regret this.

-

It turns out that double dates are even more awkward when only two of you know it's a date and you aren't the two who are dating.

They end up at a tiny hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant across from the school, the kind of place with streaky windows and no decoration and amazing cheap food. It's empty except for the four of them, even though the pizza joint two doors down the strip mall is packed with their classmates. Nino's is the traditional after school hangout spot for kids at their high school, but Blue vetoed it with prejudice when Gansey suggested grabbing a bite there after a loud, tiring hour of set design.

"I work there, I'm not going to go hang out there on my day off." Blue shoots Adam a quick look. He says nothing. Is she trying to win him over, after their conversation in the cafeteria, _I have a job too, we're on the same side, so help me out?_ If she is, it's not working.

Except maybe it is, because now he's sitting opposite a glowering Ronan Lynch over an order of potstickers while Gansey and Blue look at each other with sappy, love-stuck grins.

Honestly, he prefers the glower.

"You never said," he starts. It's not like he's planning on going along with Blue's guilt-induced pity-dating scheme, but it's awkward to stare at someone without talking, and he'd like to drown out the conversation next to him, Gansey complimenting Blue on how quickly she'd learned to use power tools.

Ronan's glower shifts a little -- still angry, now also inquisitive.

"How you got dragged into doing sets," Adam finishes. "Somehow I don't think Mr. Whelk's tragic plea for volunteers moved you."

"I have a boner for Shakespeare."

Adam stares.

Ronan's glower shifts again -- angry, but also self-satisfied.

Like hell does Ronan Lynch get to be smug at his expense.

"I wouldn't have thought he was your type," Adam says. "Nietzsche, maybe, or Lovecraft."

"Nope, Shakespeare. That ruffle collar does it for me."

Adam kicks Blue, proud refusal giving way to need for a rescue. If Ronan doesn't get to be smug at his expense, he definitely doesn't get to make Adam _laugh_.

"How's taking down the system from the inside going?" he asks when she turns to look at him. "Hide any feminist subliminal messaging in the background yet?"

"I think that'll have to wait for the painting stages," Blue says. "I don't know that there's a lot I can do to undermine the play at the structural level."

"Build a set that falls over and crushes half the actors on opening night," Ronan suggests.

"I don't want to tarnish Adam's reputation as a carpenter." Blue pauses. "Not yet, anyway."

"Fine, if you want to have a boring, patriarchal, death free play."

"Death free is as high as I'm willing to set my standards for high school theater," Adam says. "Does your boyfriend know you think his play is boring?"

Ronan leans back in his seat, like Adam caught him off-guard and he doesn't have a snappy comeback ready.

Blue kicks him. Ow. Adam bites down on a potsticker to avoid asking her what the hell that was for. He agreed, barely, to spend time with Ronan; he never said it was going to flirt or be nice while he did it. If Blue wanted that she should have picked someone who was capable of either flirting or being nice.

"So, Adam." Gansey and Adam have had a dozen classes together in the last four years, but they've never talked about anything more personal than the third conjugation future imperfect or the area under the curve. He gives off an impression now that is not unlike a guidance counselor who just brushed up on Adam's transcript thirty seconds before their appointment. "How did you get involved in the theater?"

Adam toys with the idea of answering that honestly -- _Well, Gansey, Whelk made it clear that the letter of recommendation he wrote for me had strings attached_ \-- that would get a reaction from Ronan, for sure.

But in the end, he does what he always does: deflect, distort, defend.

"It's my boundless school spirit," Adam says, monotone. "Anything for the Huskies."

"We're the Ravens," Gansey points out, like he thinks Adam has honestly forgotten.

Adam's eyebrows pop up, mock surprise. "Are we, now."

Ronan snorts.

Adam looks at him with a smirk: _You laughed first. I win._

Ronan eats the last potstickers, vindictively.


	2. should you be drinking when you don't have a liver?

The actual construction takes nearly as long as Adam expected to take his own, but his three 'helpers' prove their worth when the sets are ready to paint. Adam had been dreading that part; _work_ is easy, but _creativity_ skipped him over, along with most of life's blessings.

Except it turns out that, the whole time he was avoiding Gansey and Blue's flirtation and failing to drag a real conversation out of Ronan and working up a sweat for a play that he actively despises, Gansey had been sketching designs.

"You did these?" Adam asks, surprised, flipping through Gansey's leather-bound sketchbook.

"Oh, well, they're only doodles." Gansey smiles up at Adam. "What do you think?"

"I think you should ditch the fake modesty," Adam says. "No one wants to reassure someone who's winning at life that they're as good as they think they are."

Gansey jerks back.

Adam realizes that was, maybe, harsher than the situation called for, but before he can say anything, before he can even think of anything to say that could make it better, Ronan _laughs_.

"I'm glad you're amused," Gansey says.

"Let me enjoy it. When do I ever get to hear someone talk shit about you?"

"You do that all the time."

Ronan waves a hand: _doesn't count_.

"These are good," Adam says, awkward, not an apology but an offering. "We should use your ideas," and he lets Gansey take the lead, follows his plans to the letter. It's partly that he doesn't have any better ideas, and it's partly that it's what he owes.

Between Gansey's plans, the belated supply donation from the art teacher, and the three extra pairs of hands, painting flies by. Adam steps off the stage two days later and realizes that they're done. They finished the sets. Blue's tag team volunteering is over, and Adam never has to speak to her or Gansey or Ronan again.

Unless she _did_ sabotage the sets so they fall over on opening night, either as political protest or misguided matchmaking. In that case, Adam is not going to speak to Ronan ever again anyway. He doesn't have to uphold a deal that wasn't made in good faith.

He's done.

So when he realizes, leaving school that afternoon, that he and Ronan are parked right next to each other, he doesn't flee with the speed he'd normally use to ditch unwanted social interactions. This is the end of his time as Ronan's fake, so-secret-he-doesn't-know-about-it, admirer. What's another minute or two?

Besides -- Ronan is _ridiculous._

"You don't lock you car?"

Ronan pauses, the driver's door open. "No."

"Or roll up the windows?"

"Why would I?"

"To prevent anyone from stealing it?"

"No one's going to fuck with me."

"Your narcissism is impressive," Adam says. "How many people are you assuming can recognize your car on sight? The entire senior year? The entire school? The entire driving population of Seattle?"

"Maybe I want my car to get stolen. I could have a body hidden in the trunk."

"Then you should definitely lock it so no one opens your trunk to investigate the smell of rotten meat."

"If anyone's car stinks, it's not mine." Ronan's posture is cocky, like he's expecting Adam to start a fight. Which, okay, he's not thrilled to have someone rub their BMW in his face. But the thought of _defending the honor_ of his car, the vehicular equivalent of an elderly mutt that humps anything it can gets its legs over -- Adam doesn't think he could do it with a straight face. And he once told Whelk that he found his class _inspiring_ , so that's saying something.

"At least I don't have to cultivate a personality disorder to keep people from stealing it."

"The personality disorder came first," Ronan says. "I'm playing to my strengths."

Adam turns halfway, like he has to fish something out of his pocket. It's not convincing, maybe, but it's better than letting Ronan see him smile.

It also means that he's facing the trunk of Ronan's car and has a perfect view of Joseph Kavinsky pulling up behind him.

The windows are tinted, but if there had been any doubt about who was driving the white Mitsubishi with the flaming skull decal (which there wasn't; Kavinsky's car may actually be recognizable to the entire driving population of Seattle) it's cleared up when the window rolls down.

"Look what the cat dragged in." Kavinsky leans out of the window, looking like the morgue photos of a celebrity overdose. "Pussy Lynch."

"Move your car, Kavinsky." Ronan slides into the driver's seat and slams the door shut. The expression on his face -- the tone of his voice -- Adam could believe he had a body in his trunk. This is not a comfortable conversation to be on the edge of.

Kavinsky throws his car in park, hops out of the seat and closes the door. Strolls over to Ronan's car, slowly, his thumbs thrust into his pockets so that he leads with his hips.

"You going somewhere?" he asks, resting a forearm on the roof of Ronan's car. "What's more important than me?"

"There's mold growing in your father's ass crack that's more important than you are."

"Your boyfriend know that you talk like that before you suck his dick?"

Adam's eyes go narrow. He doesn't like Ronan, but that doesn't mean he can't hate Kavinsky more, and he takes it personal when people use _sucking dick_ as an insult.

Ronan's eyes narrow, too. "Move your fucking car."

"I've got nowhere to be." Kavinsky's hand slides down from the roof. He reaches out to brush his thumb over Ronan's lips.

Ronan doesn't even have to look away to throw the BMW in reverse. He's still got his eyes fixed on Kavinsky when he slams his foot on the gas and rams his car into Kavinsky's hard enough to blast a dent into the side, knock off the bumper, and push the Mitsubishi several feet from where Kavinsky had left it.

"You _fuckhole_ \-- " Kavinsky snarls, and runs over to his car, like it's a living creature that could bleed out from its injuries.

Adam laughs, once, a hard sharp bark.

"Whoops," Ronan says, a parody of innocence. His eyes are wide open now, full of shock and worry. "Did you not have your parking brake on? 'Cause it looks like you rolled into traffic -- "

Kavinsky whirls around, points at Ronan. It's clearly supposed to have an effect on him. It does not.

"You're going to fucking _pay_ , Lynch." Except then he gets in his car and drives off, and _really_ , if he wanted Ronan to suffer, he should have stuck around.

Adam walks over to Ronan's driver's side -- doesn't press his groin against the door or put his hand on the roof, because he's not a creep, but he gets close enough that he can say, "that was the best thing I've ever seen."

"Except now I fucked up my car, too." The fake innocence drops off Ronan's face. He sounds upset.

"Bring it to Boyd's, on eighty-fourth," Adam says. "I work there part-time, I can get you a deal on body work."

Ronan squints at him, suspicious. "Why the hell would you do that?"

Adam's gut lurches. Why _did_ he make that offer? He's part-time, not essential personnel; striking a bargain on the rate is going to require calling in favors, favors he could better use for himself.

But -- it had been pretty great, seeing an asshole get his comeuppance. That sort of gift is rare.

And, hell. They finished set construction in less time than he'd expected. That's fewer shifts Adam will have to beg off, more favors he can accrue. It's a wash, really.

Except now he's thinking about Blue, and favors, and the fact that she'd turned out to be really handy with a buzzsaw.

"Beautiful car." Adam shrugs. "Hot guy. What's not to like?"

Ronan stares at him, mute, which spares him the necessity of thinking of any other damn thing to say. He walks back to his own car, collapses into the seat before his legs give out on him.

He and Blue, he decides, starting the car with the forceful key-crank-wheel-slam-pedal-stomp it requires, are _even_.

-

Henry Cheng ambushes him at his locker the next day, or at least, he tries to: sneaks up on the other side of the open locker door while Adam juggles ten pounds in textbooks and half a dozen binders besides. He walks soundlessly, an exaggerated heel-ball-roll on bent knees that's as concerned with looking sneaky as being sneaky. He might even have succeeded in catching Adam by surprise, except, hello, his locker only blocks his view of torso and face; he can see Cheng's legs, waiting in twitchy anticipation for him to shut the door and be surprised.

Adam rearranges his books again for no other reason than to make him wait.

He almost flinches when he shuts the locker anyway. Cheng is standing so much _closer_ than anyone ever should.

"I have," Cheng says, words heavy with meaning, "a proposition for you."

"No."

"You have not heard my proposition." He lifts one hand up with an extravagant flourish; Adam's eyes process a possible threat, pay too much attention, so he can't avoid the realization that Cheng is holding two concert tickets.

"Since it involves something called Death Skull Explosion, I'm still going to pass." Adam shuts his locker, tugs on the lock to check it's secure, and walks toward his first class.

Cheng walks along beside him. "I am reliably informed that they are a local favorite of one Ronan Lynch."

Adam looks over, sharp.

"I hear you're trying to get on his good side," Cheng says. "He's going to be at this concert."

"Where'd you hear that?"

"A little bird told me." Cheng grins at him. "A very little bird. A Blue bird, if you will."

"What, you're trying to date Gansey, too?"

"I've heard Blue is trying." Cheng doesn't look ruffled in the least. He's pretty cagey for a guy that got kicked out of the science fair junior year for an experiment involving a bong. "I'd like to see her succeed."

Adam stops. "What do you want, really?"

"What does any man want?" Cheng asks. "Fabulous hair -- which I already have -- and for his friends to be happy. Which sadly I am lacking." He sticks the tickets back into Adam's face before he can call bullshit on that comment. "You'll go to the concert?"

"Let's see," Adam says, sarcasm bedrock-thick. "I could go to a terrible concert for a band I don't know to pathetically stalk a total asshole, or I could go to my scheduled work shift and make sixty dollars. Yeah, that's a hard one. I'm stumped." He starts walking again.

Cheng jogs after him -- what the hell does it take to get rid of this guy? "Is that all? Your sticking point is sixty dollars?"

After taxes, he'll make fifty-two dollars and eighty cents -- assuming he's allowed to work his entire shift, assuming it isn't slow and they force him to go home early. They've done that twice in the last two weeks, and his rent is due on Monday.

But, sure. Fifty-two dollars and eighty cents. That's _all_.

"You have an inflated opinion of Death Skull Explosion," Adam says, "if you think I would pay sixty dollars to watch them perform."

"And if money were no object?"

A spasm -- he tries to disguise it as a scuff on unevenly polished linoleum, but Cheng's watching him with those too-close eyes.

If money were no object -- forbidden words, spoken only at the very dead of night, when Adam is nearly asleep and his control over his own thoughts slips. He is not allowed to think of what he would do, if money were no object.

"I wouldn't go to that concert if you paid me sixty dollars, never mind the other way around."

"No, it would have to be considerably more than that, wouldn't it? Sixty to offset lost wages, sixty to keep the opportunity competitive, something for your trouble, of course -- would a hundred and fifty suffice?"

Adam stops again.

"You want to pay me a hundred and fifty dollars to go to a _concert_."

"To attend a concert, and have some significant level of social interaction with Lynch," Cheng says. "I do not want to risk my investment on your discovering a heretofore unknown love of death metal and losing yourself in the mosh pit."

Adam ignores his words; he's too busy watching Cheng's hands as they pull a wallet out of his pocket, riffle through it carelessly and produce three fifty dollar bills without trouble.

Adam is burning and frozen at the same time. There were a lot more than three fifty dollar bills in there.

"Two hundred," he says. "Asshole tax."

Cheng pulls out another fifty without question and hands the whole stack to Adam -- two hundred dollars, produced like it was nothing.

"I'll see you at the show."

-

Cheng meets him outside the venue, wearing a leather jacket and studded collar and reeking of hair gel. Adam did not charge enough of an asshole tax.

"To be clear," Adam says, "once we're inside we're splitting up."

"Of course, I do not want either of us to cockblock the other." Cheng hands their tickets to the bouncer at the door -- and Adam was so distracted by Cheng's attempts to be hardcore that he hadn't really thought about the fact that they were at a bar, or how they were supposed to get inside.

Cheng thought ahead, enough that he has IDs for each of them that get the nod from the bouncer.

"Did you make me a fake ID?" Adam demands once they're safely inside.

"I have not made that level of investment in this project, no." Cheng ignores the desperate way Adam grabs the card from him. "I merely procured an ID that looked sufficiently like you."

Adam's heart rate slows -- from racing to merely jogging -- as he realizes that the picture isn't his, that the name on the ID is _Patrick Verona_ , not him and not anyone he knows. In fact -- 

"He doesn't look anything like me."

"White boys all look the same." Cheng reaches to take the card back.

"Yeah, no, I'm keeping this." Adam sticks it in his own pocket. There may be some occasion where it's beneficial to be twenty-two, or to not be Adam Parrish, or both. "Consider it further incentive for me to play my part."

"By all means, then. The world is your stage," and before Adam can process that strangely ominous statement Cheng shoves him.

When he looks up from stumbling over his own feet, Ronan Lynch is standing ten feet away, in front of the bar.

At least Ronan didn't see him trip. Small blessing. Though maybe if he'd embarrassed himself badly enough Ronan would've left and then he could go home and stop this -- whatever it is, taking advantage, being took, both at the same time.

Adam leans against the bar such that his body is mostly turned toward Ronan and smiles Patrick Verona's smile at the bartender.

Ronan has a glass in front of him, dark liquor of some kind, and Adam quickly considers the possibility of asking him what he's drinking. He even more quickly considers the limits to how pathetic he's willing to be.

"Manny's," he tells the bartender, and Ronan must be listening, because he snorts.

"Weak-ass beer."

Adam looks at him out of the corner of his eye. "Local products are better for the environment. Isn't that what people mean when they say drink responsibly?"

"Sure," Ronan says. "Get drunk off your nuts, just be an annoying hipster d-bag about it at the same time."

The bartender sets Adam's beer in front of him. Adam fishes out his wallet and pays in cash -- he doesn't have Patrick Verona's credit cards, alas -- and then he raises the glass to Ronan, half a toast.

They get pushed away from the bar by people coming up for drinks, and the flow of traffic sends them both the same way, toward the back of the room. Ronan leans up against the wall. Adam leans next to him, not close enough to touch, hoping he looks casual and knowing that he doesn't.

The band starts playing, which saves Adam having to think of anything else to say to Ronan.

Except he's not convinced that anything that involves these _noises_ can be deemed salvation.

"I should have figured you'd have shitty taste in music," he says during a lull that might be the end of a song or might just be because the drummer decided he was done. It wasn't really coherent enough as a song to have an ending.

"Fuck you, I could be refined, you don't know."

"Well, let's see." Adam figures the argument makes itself, but as soon as he reaches for it he finds that he does in fact have evidence. "You solve your problems with property damage, you enjoy speculating about senseless violence, while we were working on Taming of the Shrew you consistently called Petruchio _Piss_ truchio -- "

"He's an asshole," Ronan says, "down with the patriarchy."

" -- and you drew stick figures all over your best friend's sketchbook. Yes, very highbrow."

"And I'm a classically trained pianist," Ronan claims.

" _Are_ you just saying that because pianist sounds like penis."

"Not just." Ronan does something disturbing with his face. Adam belatedly realizes that he's smiling, too late for him to smile back. "Also because it's true."

He thinks about calling bullshit on that, and then he thinks about the idea of Ronan Lynch -- with his shaved head and his hard liquor and his leather jacket that he actually knows how to wear, Cheng, take notes, or better yet just give up -- lying at a shitty rock show about being a _classically trained pianist_ , and that's even weirder than the idea that he's telling the truth.

"That only proves my point, though," Adam says. "You have the skills and the knowledge. You could have good taste in music if you wanted to. But you _choose_ this. That's worse than acting out of ignorance."

"Big talk for a guy who also paid to be here. If the music's so shitty why'd you even come?"

Adam takes a sip of his beer to hide how badly that question throws him. He'd forgotten for a minute why he was really here, and it wasn't to drink beer, or make fun of Ronan's weird relationship with music, and it definitely wasn't to listen to Death Skull Explosion.

He doesn't like the reminder, but he doesn't like a lot of the things he gets in life.

"I came with a friend," he says. "He had an extra ticket."

"So where is he?"

"I ditched him." At least that part isn't a lie.

"Really."

"Yeah." Adam takes another sip of beer. "I saw this guy whose number I'm trying to get."

Ronan's face transforms. Funny, if anyone had asked Adam, he would have said that Ronan _always_ looked pissed off, but at some point in the last few minutes he must have looked elsewise, in order for the expression to come back new again. His eyes are molten, hot enough to burn through Cheng's fifties, to see through everything that Adam has papered over: the hollow bank account, the empty apartment, the depressing birthday last summer when he'd moved into the apartment, the even more depressing eighteen years before that.

 _He's not psychic, he doesn't know anything_ , Adam thinks, _it's just nerves_.

Another part of his brain offers a correction: _guilty conscience_.

"Good luck with that," Ronan says, sharp with sarcasm, and pushes his way into the crowd.

Adam doesn't follow him. He stays pressed up against the wall through another two-or-possibly-five songs as he finishes his beer, and then he leaves. He isn't going to stick around for Cheng or Gansey or Blue; he isn't sticking around for anybody.


	3. who needs affection when I have blind hatred

Adam is prepared for Cheng to be annoyed that he ducked out during the first set. He's ready to argue that that was significant by the standards of Ronan's typical social interactions. Hell, it was significant by Adam's standards. 

He's not prepared for what he actually gets the next day at school: an ebullient Cheng following him around talking his ear off.

"That was incredible. Simply beyond the dreams of man. I swear at one point Lynch thought about smiling."

"I thought you weren't going to hang around."

"I didn't mean I wasn't going to _watch_ ," Cheng says, utterly without shame. "How do you feel about a repeat performane? I am having a party at my place this weekend. Gansey and Blue will be in attendance, and so Ronan must attend as well."

"He's not an extrovert. Maybe he doesn't want to go to your party."

"Leave the fact of his attendance to me," and that isn't even the point that Adam was making, _you can't get him there_ instead of _you shouldn't try_. "Will we see you?"

 _No._ "I don't think so."

"Oh, I can be reasonable, I do not intend to make you feel underappreciated. Shall we say three hundred dollars?"

 _Three hundred dollars_. Five hundred total, hitting that empty bank account like a meteor. He could get the shocks on his car fixed. He could replace the sneakers with the duct taped soles. He could squirrel it away, an extra bit of padding against a world that is determined to kick him around.

He has to swallow before he can speak.

"When?"

-

The party is alive and well by the time Adam arrives, already spilling out the doors and -- _crash_ , breaking glass -- the windows of Cheng's house.

This is such a stupid idea. The best he can hope for is that the cops will arrive soon and shut this all down.

He pushes his way through the party, indelicate. Mostly people don't mind; he arrived late, and his cohort gives every indication of taking advantage of the alcohol head start he gave them. People are dancing and shouting over the music and making out. He walks past one room and catches a glimpse of Cheng, shirtless and enthroned on a recliner that had somehow been hoisted atop of a table. He hurries away.

The further into the house he goes, the less he wants to be seen, the more he wants to leave. He can't _imagine_ that Ronan would have come to this, and even if he had, that he hadn't just turned around and left. Cheng must have been mistaken, and Adam would give up and go already, except _three hundred dollars_ demands he at least check first. Except he can't picture Ronan being _anywhere_ in this house -- 

He says, "oh," unheard under the noise of the party.

The second floor of the house is crowded, too, but more manageable than the first. Adam sticks his head out every window he passes, walks in on more than one couple making out behind closed-but-not-locked doors, until he finds one that gives him the view he wants: Ronan Lynch sitting on the roof.

He walks over to the next room -- master bedroom, thankfully unoccupied -- and steps through it out onto a balcony. It puts him about six feet below and slightly to the left of Ronan.

"How'd you get up?" he asks.

Ronan takes a sip of his beer. "You can climb up from there if you're not chicken-shit."

The taunt lacks subtlety, which makes it all the more galling that it works. If Adam doesn't prove he's brave enough to climb up after Ronan, Ronan won't talk to him, which will render the night's suffering pointless.

He hauls himself up until his feet are firmly planted on the balcony railing and his hands are on the edge of the roof. If he swings his foot over he can get it up on the corner of the door frame, which will give him a tiny ledge to push against to get his torso up onto the roof. It's doable, but not great.

"Will you catch me if I fall?" It's a more earnest question than he'd like to admit.

"Not if it makes me drop my beer."

"Great," Adam says, scooting his hands another inch along. "Solid priorities. Alcohol, _then_ human life, _I shall not spill a beer or through inaction cause a beer to be spilled_ ," and he stops talking because he's at the point where he has to _heave_ \-- up -- and then his foot doesn't find the ledge and he has one sharp thought, _if I fall two stories I am taking Ronan's stupid beer with me,_ and his hand flails upward.

His foot finds the ledge after all, pushes against it until he can get his center of mass up over the edge of the roof.

Just as he does, Ronan takes his hand and pulls him up.

He sprawls out further along the roof then he meant to, scraping his elbow against the shingles and landing very nearly on top of Ronan, who didn't even have the decency to spill so much as a drop of his beer.

He pulls his hand away.

"You're welcome," Ronan says, sarcastically.

"I could have done it myself," Adam says. "I was about to."

"Uh-huh." Ronan takes a very cynical sip. "If you want to jump down and go again, I won't stop you."

"I got where I wanted to." Adam shifts until he's as comfortable as he can get, sitting on a rough, sloped surface. "It's not the journey, it's the destination."

Ronan snorts. "Yeah, I can tell you're super excited to be on a _roof_. How'd you find me?"

"I asked myself, where would I go if I hated everyone here but couldn't leave."

"I could leave."

"I saw Gansey downstairs." He'd been one of Cheng's court; the less Adam thinks about that, the better. "So no, not really."

"Screw you, asshole." Adam would've thought, with how often Ronan swears, it would dilute the effects, that if you say _fuck_ the way some people say _how are you_ or _good morning_ that it would lose its impact, but no. It is clear as day that he means it this time. "Gansey's not my goddamn _keeper_ , I don't need his permission to go somewhere. I'm not a wild fucking animal."

"Of course you're not," Adam says, confused enough by the heat of that response that he doesn't second guess what he's saying. "You're a classically trained pianist. You're also smart enough to know that if you disappeared from a party without telling your friend you were leaving, and that friend was as codependent as Gansey, he would freak out."

Ronan glares at him, a deep searching glare that's equal parts investigation and attack.

Adam blinks at him a few times, because he still has no clue what he's done to merit the attack and what he's done -- in the last thirty seconds, that Ronan is aware of, anyway -- to merit the investigation.

Ronan still doesn't explain himself, so Adam figures that's enough of humoring the madman for free, and he reaches over and takes the beer out of Ronan's hand.

"I told you not to do that," Ronan complains.

"You told me not to spill it." Adam debates spilling it, anyway, just to get a rise out of Ronan, an easy obvious annoyance that he knows the cause of, but decides that he'd rather try for _no annoyance at all_. It may be impossible, but hey, Adam has always had ambitions larger than his life. "And I'm not." He takes a sip.

Ronan takes the can back from him and finishes it in one long pull -- it's more than half full. He swallows, a couple of times, and Adam is _blindsided_ by a sudden hot stab of lust.

He jerks his gaze away from Ronan, out to the dark lawn of Cheng's house.

Ronan is attractive. Obviously. That's obvious, everyone knows that, he's got that whole sculpted, bad boy, cheekbones you could kill yourself on _thing_. That's not the point. The point is that he's managed to make himself completely undateable to the entire high school in spite of being easily the most attractive person in its halls, that he's one wrong step away from getting expelled, that he missed half of sophomore year and everyone knows that he was in juvie. It doesn't matter if he's hot, because he's a thug, he's an asshole, he's --

\-- a classically trained pianist who wants his best friend to be happy, even if it means he has to go to a party he hates.

Adam lays out, presses his back against the roof. Maybe this all makes more sense if he can't _see_ Ronan.

Ronan stretches out along the roof alongside Adam. Not _by_ him, just, next to him. They're not laying down together, they're just -- both laying down.

"Why the fuck are you here, anyway?" and there's that casual, meaningless swearing again. It sets him at ease, when he isn't sure that's a good idea at all.

"Honestly?" Adam asks, as dangerous a question as he knows. "I don't even want to be here. I got invited, and I was able to do it."

"You ever get sick of doing things to prove that you can?"

Adam shuts his eyes hard. "Constantly."

"So where are your friends?" Ronan asks.

Adam blows out air. "God, that's even worse. Stop asking questions that make me sound like a loser."

"Nope. Answer the question, loser."

Adam opens his eyes again, fixed squarely on the stars hanging in the night sky over him, washed out and haughty.

"I don't really have any friends," he admits.

"Yeah, pretty sure that make you a loser."

"Oh, go to hell."

"What about the guy from the concert? Your friend had a ticket -- "

Adam's too surprised to be annoyed, even though he should be. "He's not really my friend," he admits.

"Boyfriend?" Ronan asks.

"Oh, God no," Adam says. "No, I don't know, it's -- " he makes an exhausted noise. "Have you ever had an extrovert try to adopt you?" he asks, which doesn't make any goddamn sense but is the closest he can get to explaining Henry Cheng without bringing up Gansey, dating, or five hundred dollars.

"Don't shit yourself from surprise, but people don't try to _adopt_ me."

Adam snorts a laugh. "Their loss."

"So you came to a party where you don't like anyone."

"So did you."

"I like one person here," and that's true, a stark reminder that even Ronan (thug Ronan, juvie Ronan, classically trained -- _no_ ) is winning at life on more metrics than Adam. "And I know I'm a disaster, what the fuck's your excuse?"

Adam focuses on a line of stars. He's not good at constellations. They never struck him as a very useful thing to learn.

He could've used the distraction right now.

"It's what teenagers do, right?" he asks. "Go to shitty parties with all the assholes they can't wait to get away from during the school day -- " _get out of their rundown studio apartments, hear their name on the lips of someone who isn't a teacher, do something that they didn't exhaustively calculate was worth it_.

"I'm shocked," Ronan says, voice flat. "Teenagers don't just sit at home working on their embroidery samplers?"

Adam actually laughs, from his gut, hard enough that it startles him. He props himself up on his elbows because he's worried, for a second, that he's going to slide down the roof. It gives him a view of Ronan, crushing the empty beer can and pulling back like he's about to throw it onto the lawn.

Adam grabs his hand.

"Jesus, were you raised by wolves?"

"No," Ronan says. "But I was raised in a barn."

"Take it downstairs and throw it away properly."

"Fuck downstairs."

"Downstairs has more beer."

Ronan _hmm_ s and then stands up in one abrupt motion, walks not at all cautiously enough over the crest of the roof.

Adam follows, careful and bewildered, as Ronan walks over to a skylight that opens into the attic, with a conveniently positioned ladder leading up to the roof.

He fumes.

Ronan steps all the way down to the bottom rung before looking up at Adam, beaming like a Romeo who's just found his Juliet's balcony instead of the _complete fucking asshole_ that he really is.

"You should try using your brain to solve problems," he says, earnest and helpful. "Instead of just brute strength. It's more refined."

"I can't wait to get back up on the roof with you and _push you off of it_ ," Adam says, and then shuts up as he climbs, because if he manages to fall off of the ladder after all of that he might as well just lay down and die.

They're hit with the noise of the party as soon as they open the attic door. It doesn't bother Adam as much as it did on the way up. As much as he hates it, Ronan has a look on his face like he hates it _even more_ , and after his trick with the ladder up to the roof, that's good for Adam's soul.

They push their way through the party a lot faster than Adam had been able to do on his own. Shockingly, people don't like to get in Ronan's way. They make it to the kitchen and Adam grabs two cans of Rainier.

Ronan scowls at him, like a gift. "That's what hipsters piss out after they drink a PBR."

"Drink local," Adam says.

Ronan grabs one of the cans from him and pulls a Swiss Army knife out of his pocket -- Adam is the opposite of surprised -- and punctures the bottom of the can. He cracks open the pop tab, like he's about to shotgun it, except he's holding it over the carpet in the hallway. The beer gushes out in a matter of seconds.

"Oops."

"Exactly what quality of beer do you think you're going to find at this party that's better than Rainier?"

"You're a fucking quitter, Parrish," Ronan says, and shoulders his way further into the kitchen.

Adam is still grinning by the wet spot on the carpet, flustered and amused and alarmed at the same time, when Tad finds him.

Admittedly, Tad Carruthers isn't the _last_ person that Adam wants to see -- there are his parents, obviously, and somewhere out there Cheng has crowned himself The King of the Party and Adam wants no part of that -- but he's pretty high up the list.

"Adam." Tad swoops in with that smile that he thinks is charming but really isn't, even if you ignore the fact that he just stepped in a puddle of beer. "How funny is it that you're here?"

"Not...very?" Adam responds, because what the hell does that mean. He can only tell it's supposed to be a come-on because Tad has tried to hit on him every other time they've talked since that ill-advised afternoon during spirit week when Adam made out with him in the theater department's supply closet.

"I haven't see you around lately."

 _Good_ , Adam thinks, and then thinks that he doesn't want to be _that_ much of an asshole. He just wants Tad to _take a hint_. "Huh. Guess not."

"Yeah, you don't normally go to parties, do you?"

"No."

"That's cool that you did," Tad says. "Tonight, I mean. You look like you could use a good time."

Ah. Well, at least that makes sense as a pick up line.

"I'm okay," Adam says.

"I mean," Tad starts, and then _swear to God,_ steps closer up toward Adam and rests his hand on the wall over Adam's shoulder, like some dastardly rogue pinning down the sweet damsel, except it is the least smooth thing Adam has ever seen. Absolutely nothing about it is seductive or menacing; he mostly wants to laugh. "Since you're here -- "

"I'm not," Adam says.

Tad blinks. "What?"

Adam meant _I'm not interested_ or _I'm not going anywhere with you_ or _I'm not sure you should ever be allowed to hit on anyone ever again_ , but he thinks back on it and realizes he just told Tad that he _wasn't physically present_.

"I'm not here," Adam says again, like he means it this time.

Tad pulls away from the wall in his confusion. "But -- you're here."

"It looks like that, doesn't it?" Adam puts his Rainier in Tad's hand and quick steps it down the hall while he's distracted.

He only makes it a few feet before Tad says, "hang on, Adam," and comes up behind him.

Except -- 

"Fuck off." Ronan appears -- Adam's not sure when or how; he'd gotten his back turned around toward the kitchen -- and looms over Tad. 

Tad's eyes go enormous and he turns and scurries off with Adam's beer.

Adam presses his fist up against his mouth, hard, to stop himself from smiling, but then Ronan glares at him and he collapses against the wall.

"God, that was amazing," he tells Ronan. "Does anyone ever tell you you're terrifying?"

"Yeah, but they don't say it like a compliment." Ronan takes a sip of his new beer. The label is in German, like it's actually imported, and who brings an imported beer to a high school party? Adam thinks about it and decides the answer has to be _King Henry the Festive_. "What was that about?"

The edge wears off Adam's humor. He's unexpectedly embarrassed about having to confess this to Ronan. "We made out one time. He can't take a hint that I'm not interested."

Ronan makes a sound like a laugh. It isn't very funny. "Yeah, clingy guys are the worst."

Adam is no longer embarrassed.

Adam is _mortified_.

What the hell is he _doing?_ No amount of money is worth being Tad Carruthers, pestering and harassing someone who doesn't want him around, turning himself pathetic and obscene. He mutters, "I gotta go, have a good night," and hurries out of the house as fast as he can move, face burning and barely breathing.

-

The next week is dress rehearsal. Adam is dragged back to the auditorium one last time to make sure that the sets function properly. It's the day before his final research paper is due in Econ, so he's already annoyed about it.

He's even more annoyed when the rest of the set crew shows up.

"Adam!" Gansey greets him enthusiastically but quietly -- Pisstruchio is already on his first big speech.

Adam gives him a wordless fist bump and then mimes concern for the actors to get out of having to make conversation. He doesn't want Ronan and his friends here, doesn't even know how they knew to come, except that Gansey is capable of holding a conversation with _anyone_. He probably got it from one of the actors, along with the name of their crush, their GPA, and the last six generations of their genealogy.

Ronan drifts over to him during intermission. Adam feels that entire side of him go warm, like standing too close to a bonfire. The other side of him feels cold and ill.

"I thought by dress rehearsal a play was supposed to be good," Ronan says.

"Yeah, maybe," Adam replies, noncommittal, and hurries over to the opposite wing to pretend to inspect something. Anything.

-

It's a slow night at Body's, the kind of night where Boyd takes a dinner break that stretches out for a couple of hours and leaves Adam as the sole and thus in-charge employee. Adam would take it as a compliment to be handed that kind of trust, but he knows it's more about cost reduction and Boyd's fondness for a four-beer dinner than anything else.

When Ronan drives his banged up BMW into the shop, Adam doesn't care _why_ he's the only employee present. He's just glad that he is.

"Hey." Adam plays it cool, tries to treat Ronan like he'd treat any other customer who came by the store. That would be a more helpful guideline if he were comfortable interacting with customers. "Need to get that fixed?" and then he winces. _Obviously, Adam, why would anyone go to a mechanic except to get their car fixed_.

"Yup. Heard this was the place to go."

Adam nods, curses his past self for being an idiot, and grabs a clipboard to fill out the intake paperwork. It needs to get done anyway, and this way he can ignore Ronan until he leaves.

Except Ronan is hard to ignore by nature, and is going out of his way to be _impossible_ to ignore now: trailing along behind Adam, reading over his shoulder, quibbling with Adam's assessment, "the color's called slate."

"Good for it," Adam says, and bites his tongue: _ignore, ignore_. He doesn't change the listed color. 'Gray' is good enough.

"That's not a _dent_ , that's a busted-ass crater," Ronan says, kicking his foot at the admittedly large dent Adam had just noted down.

"That's not an official -- " Adam cuts himself off. "Look, can you just let me do this? You don't have to hang around just because it took me so long to get the message."

Ronan sounds confused. Adam doesn't dare look up. "What message?"

"You're not interested, fine. I'll leave you alone, okay? I wasn't trying to be _clingy_."

Adam steps around the other side of the car, notes some scratches and dents that had to be old, not from the crash with Kavinsky. Ronan doesn't follow. He reminds himself the space is a good thing.

Ronan says, stilted, "I don't mind if you cling a _little_."

Adam jerks his gaze up, stares in shock. Ronan is standing with one hand reaching up around the back of his neck and his jaw clenched shut, like he wants to pretend he hadn't just spoken. Except he had. He'd said --

"Oh my God," Adam blurts out, "you're playing hard to get."

Ronan flares his nostrils. "I'm not playing," he mutters.

"Right," Adam says, no idea how he feels, let alone what he's saying, "you're just hard," and then he blushes.

Ronan gives no indication that he noticed what is, at best, a single entendre, maybe half an entendre. He shrugs.

"I'm, you know, a mess. Whatever. So's my stupid car. Can you fix it or what?"

"I -- I can fix it. Fix your car. That's what I'm good for." He winces at how that sounds. He's been honor roll his entire high school career, he can _do words_ better than that. "Um, I need your number. For the paperwork," so okay, he can't do words good at all and the last four years of his life were pure luck.

Ronan takes the clipboard from him to fill out his information. Adam's stomach rolls over. He steps away to inspect Ronan's gray-not-slate-slate-is-a-stupid-color car.

He needs the space; he's letting his embarrassment get to him. Ronan isn't Tad or any of the handful of people that Adam has made out with, there's no reason to act like anything is going to happen. Even if he _were_ , even if Adam were going to hook up with him, that's no reason to be jumping at everything Ronan says or listening for every hitch in his breath. He sure as shit never gave Tad that much of his attention.

Ronan hands him back the clipboard and leaves. Adam enters the information into Boyd's computer, keeps getting distracted by Ronan's unexpectedly neat penmanship.

He groans. Stupid Blue and stupid Cheng got into his head somehow, that's the only explanation. He hopes Gansey gives them both mono.


	4. can you ever just be whelmed?

Adam is not noticeable. He's not the kind of guy who stands out, and it's by design as much as by nature. For too long, too much counted on no one noticing him. And he's eighteen and financially independent now, no one can make him do anything -- but that almost makes the stakes higher, because if anyone pays him too much attention they'll wonder why he has his own apartment, why he doesn't just live at home, and he doesn't want to answer those questions.

So he notices the fact that people are noticing him at school that week. It starts gradually, not enough to escape his attention but enough that he can't figure it out -- a couple girls looking at him and whispering, a couple of guys who _stop_ whispering when he walks into the restroom. It makes him jumpy, all the more so because he can't tell why people he's never spoken to suddenly care about him.

It's only on Friday, spotting Ronan in the hallway and hesitating, thinking back to the conversation the night before in the garage, and deciding to approach him after all -- only then does he figure it out, and probably only because he sees Tad Carruthers talking to a congregation in front of his locker and _pointing_ at Adam like he never had a kindergarten teacher tell him that pointing is rude and more than that it's _obvious._

"Oh, fuck," he says, and of course that's right when he gets in Ronan's hearing range.

"Oh fuck to you, too." Ronan elbows him in the side. Adam swallows, hard, which doesn't even make _sense_ as a pain reaction.

"Have people been talking about you this week?" Adam asks.

Ronan raises an eyebrow at him.

"More than usual?" Adam amends.

"How the hell would I know?"

"You don't -- notice it?" Adam looks around, glares when he sees Tad is still looking at him. Tad, the coward, looks away.

Ronan shrugs. "Figured out not to."

Adam shakes his head.

"You okay?" Ronan asks, gruff.

He admits, "it gives me the creeps."

"They're talking about you?"

"They're talking about _us._ "

Ronan blinks at him a few times. Adam looks pointedly at Tad's audience -- Tad has scampered off, but the people he was talking to all turn away in unison, which no innocent party has ever done.

Adam looks back at Ronan, _see?_

Ronan opens his mouth, and Adam has the baseless hope that whatever he says will make things better somehow.

 _Completely_ baseless. Ronan doesn't even get a chance to speak.

"Lynch! I thought'd you'd be too busy crying to come to school."

Ronan goes tense all over, drawn up for a confrontation. It sets Adam's teeth on edge.

Honestly, he doesn't understand how a system that's put Ronan on his last strike hasn't already managed to expel Kavinsky. Kavinsky is a crime all by himself, and that's before he opens his mouth.

"Heard your boyfriend found a new hole." Kavinsky's friends snicker. Adam wishes that Blue were here to tell Kavinsky exactly what she thinks about being referred to like that, and then he decides, no, he doesn't want anyone he's even remotely fond of to be subjected to this.

"Fuck off, jackass," Ronan says. Adam glares at him, because that's not how you deal with a bully. You don't respond, you don't train them to expect satisfaction from you, you take it silently and wait until they go away.

Sure enough, Kavinsky smirks at getting a rise out of Ronan. Steps up closer to them -- to Adam, and gets up in his face.

"You must've been desperate. You couldn't do any better than this?" and Kavinsky grabs Adam by the chin, turns his face one way and the other like he's inspection a show horse.

Kavinsky's goons laugh.

Underneath the sound, Adam can hear Ronan's backpack hit the ground.

"Don't touch me." Adam doesn't make it a threat, or a plea, just a boring flat statement.

Kavinsky hangs onto his face. "What, Lynch, you haven't broken in your pet yet?"

Ronan yanks Kavinsky's arm, which gets him off of Adam and sends him stumbling down the hall.

Adam doesn't feel relief or joy or anything except for dread, because he knows, like every single student in the hall whispering and running and standing on tiptoe to see better knows, that Ronan is one misstep away from getting expelled.

So when Kavinsky finds his feet again, it's not to face off with Ronan.

It's to face off with Adam.

He can feel Ronan breathing down his neck, trying to get at Kavinsky for himself, and Adam hates every second of this, hates putting himself on the line for a physical threat. That's not how you survive the world. You don't stand up, you don't volunteer for the pain, you say anything you can to minimize it, to make it something you can walk away from, and then you walk away, keep walking until you're out of range.

But he hates the thought of Ronan getting kicked out of school, sent away from Gansey, wasting the last four years' effort when they're so close to graduation, and all because of this pathetic excuse for a person.

"Go away." A tough guy would say something cooler than that, scarier than that, but Adam doesn't want to be a tough guy. He doesn't care if Kavinsky fears him or respects him or remembers him, as long as he _leaves._

"You let it fight your battles for you, Lynch?" Adam feels his cheeks glowing dull hot red as Kavinsky talks over his head, _shame-anger-fear_ , but he doesn't react, doesn't react, doesn't react. Kavinsky is walking as he talks, and Ronan is quivering with pent up rage behind him. He's going to launch himself at Kavinsky the second he gets a clear angle on him, and Kavinksy is intent on giving him that chance. "I guess if it'd fuck you it'll do anything -- "

Adam shoves Kavinsky, both hands out and stepping forward to put as much force into it as he can, push him out of Ronan's range.

"Go away," he says again.

Kavinsky laughs. "Oh, it's trying to protect you, it's so _cute._ " And then his face flips to absolute rage, no warning that he's about to throw a punch, except that Adam knows exactly what that looks like.

He doesn't duck. Ducking doesn't help; ducking just gets another punch thrown your way, worse than the first to punish you for getting ideas. He takes it right on the face, just like he's supposed to, and he curls over, hands flying up to his eye -- a perfectly paint-by-numbers pain response.

"Mother _fucker_ ," Ronan spits behind him, over the sounds of the crowd, growing louder and louder _\-- oh my God -- did you see -- holy shit! --_ and Adam realize that this was all for nothing, because Ronan is about to charge around him and go beat the shit out of Kavinsky anyway.

He stumbles forward before Ronan can get a chance and throws himself at Kavinsky.

It's not an effective attack. Adam doesn't _know_ how to attack, has never bothered to learn. Fighting back gets you killed.

But the stakes are all jumbled up now, and for a second _stay alive_ comes up against _stop Ronan_ and it _loses._

He knocks Kavinsky down, more through luck or surprise than anything else, but Kavinsky flips them over, slams Adam against the floor with a force that leaves him winded and dizzy, and then he pulls his fist back and hits Adam in the face again.

It flares through Adam's mind, starburst bright aftershock of the pain, that this shouldn't hurt so much. It should be better, because he's not just taking it, he put himself here, he has agency.

It doesn't make a damn bit of difference. Pain doesn't care why it's happening. It hurts. He wants it to stop, let it stop, _make it stop --_

Someone pulls Kavinsky off of him, another hand grabs Adam, pulls him up without any gentleness. There's teachers around now, asking the crowd what happened, who started it.

With one open eye, seeing spots, Adam takes in Ronan staring at him like he has no idea what just happened.

-

"Are you _lost?_ "

Adam actually likes Ms. Johnson, as much as he likes any teacher. She's the kind of stern no-bullshit disciplinarian that a lot of his classmates can't stand, but he appreciates that things get _done_ in her class.

Besides, the fact that she's surprised to see him in detention -- him, _Adam Parrish, that quiet kid, making trouble?_ \-- means that she, unlike the rest of the school, hasn't been gossiping about him today.

So he just says, "no, ma'am," and hands her his detention slip and goes to sit down in the back of the room where no one can stare at his black eye, even though he feels murderous, feels like he's dying, feels like the last year never happened and he's right back in the middle of hell again.

He settles down in the desk and stares helplessly at his backpack out of one eye. What do people even do in detention?

The fire alarm goes off.

"All of you, stand up and gather your stuff _quietly._ " Ms. Johnson glares at all of them, a warden who has weathered jailbreaks before. "We're walking out of here in an orderly line, understand?"

They understand. They move quickly and mostly quietly; getting out of detention is a plus, even if you have to be orderly about it, and no one's going to risk that.

Adam ends up at the back of the line, moving stiffly. Ms. Johnson gives him a nod as he closes the classroom door, and then leads the row of them along. It's oddly like being in elementary school again, the teachers looking after you, and it's nice for a second, before Adam remembers that that wasn't helpful even when he had been a child.

So he's lagging behind the group when a hand reaches out and grabs him.

He jumps out of his skin, whirls around to glare out of his good eye -- 

\-- and sees that it's Ronan.

The conveniently timed fire alarm makes a lot more sense.

Ronan tugs him down the hall, away from Ms. Johnson and the rest of the detention squad, and only when they're outside does Adam say, "it's a crime to pull a fake fire alarm."

"Who said anything about fake?"

Adam halts. "What is on fire?"

"A trashcan," Ronan says. "K's backpack might have been in it at the time."

"God, I can't believe I've been striking out with an arsonist," Adam mutters.

"Sure you can." Ronan tugs his arm again. And what's he going to do at this point? Go back to school, go back to the detention because _we understand Joseph provoked you, but you should have walked away, we expect you to be more mature than that?_

He follows Ronan out to the parking lot, climbs into the passenger seat of what he hopes is a car Ronan rented, not stole, to drive while the BMW is in the shop.

It does occur to him to ask, "where are we going?" but Ronan only glances at him.

"Does it matter?"

Adam buckles his seat belt.

They drive. Adam tries to relax, but his face is throbbing and he just skipped out on detention and the car stereo is playing something that sounds distressingly like Death Skull Explosion. That, at least, he can do something about. There's a lull in the music -- a song coming to an end or one of the musicians OD'ing -- Adam clicks eject on the CD.

The radio kicks in with a high pitched electronic wail. A lateral move, at best.

Ronan doesn't show any sign of knowing or caring that the music has changed, except that when Adam turns his face to look out the window -- where are they going, anyway? -- the radio goes silent and there's a faint _whirring_ noise and then Death Skull Explosion starts up again.

Adam looks at Ronan, turns his whole face to do it since his left eye is useless. Ronan is driving with both eyes forward and both hands on the wheel and a completely bogus innocent expression on his face.

They manage another five and a half music changes, each flicking the CD in or out while the other is distracted. Ronan, for his part, is a deceptively good driver, which means he gives Adam an opportunity every time that he checks over his shoulder before merging lanes. Adam means to keep his eyes on the radio, even though he hates the music it's playing as much as the CD -- it's not really about music at this point. But Ronan is a deceptively shitty driver and keeps almost hitting thing on the right side of the car, which makes Adam jump every time and check that they didn't just murder anyone.

Surely Ronan has to be either a good driver or a bad driver. Adam thinks over the data points in his set and decides that if Ronan were to crash a car, it would be through deliberate malice and not carelessness, so when the car's wheels come up over the curb on a tight right turn Adam pretends to look over his shoulder but lashes out with his left hand.

He catches Ronan with his finger on the disc. A surge of satisfaction run through him, from his fingertips straight to his heart. He keeps his grip on Ronan's hand, wanting to see the look on Ronan's face when he turns his head.

He is not disappointed. Ronan's expression is one of deeply annoyed betrayal, and Adam almost gives the game away by laughing.

"Do you mind? I love this song."

"Really." Ronan grips back. "I thought I had shitty taste in music."

"Oh, well, broken clocks and all that, you know." He is _not going to laugh_ , dammit. He doesn't know what game they're playing but he's not going to lose it. He twists his hold on Ronan's hand so that Ronan can't squeeze his fingers so tight, because he thinks letting go first would also constitute a defeat.

" _Really_ ," Ronan says again. "Maybe I should make you a mixtape. To see if I can find any other songs you love."

Adam bites his lip like he's having to give this matter a great deal of thought. God, a Ronan Lynch mixtape. He can only imagine. Death metal and electrocrap and -- are there any bands that are just demolition crews intercut with the sound of people crying?

"I don't want you to go to any trouble."

"No trouble at all," Ronan says with an unholy glee in his voice.

"I mean, you already sprung me from detention," Adam says.

"Like it's a hardship to set K's shit on fire." Ronan's voice goes a little muted. "Besides, you're taking care of my car for me."

Adam doesn't have any trouble not laughing at that. He thinks about Ronan's car, and the deal he'd cut him on the labor, and how he'd had to agree to work an open-close and fix the transmission on Boyd's high-maintenance Mustang to get that deal.

"Yeah, well, it's no hardship." It occurs to Adam that he'd rotated his hand around, which did mean Ronan couldn't squeeze it as hard, but had put their palms facing each other. He tries to remember if his hands are dirty, coated in motor oil or resin or grease, before he remembers that he'd just come from school. He wonders if Ronan can feel any blisters on his hand. He can't actually remember if he has any blisters at the moment, and that's something he should be able to feel for himself, except all he can feel is the skin of Ronan's palm.

Ronan lets go of his hand to shift the car into third. Adam tells himself firmly that this is a good thing.

They get where they're going, apparently, which Adam can only tell because Ronan throws the car in park and turns the engine off. They don't look to be anywhere in particular. For one second Adam thinks that they're just supposed to be in the car, _nowhere in particular_ and everything that entails, and his heart stops.

Ronan gets out of the car. Adam scrambles to unbuckle his seat belt and follow after.

There's a trail head near where they've parked. Adam has to imagine that Ronan has been here before, because it's not obvious from the road. Ronan certainly moves as though he knows where he's going; but then, he always moves like that, confident and unafraid, and Adam thinks about Ronan telling him that he'd just decided to stop noticing anyone talking about him. What a gift, to be Ronan Lynch, to face off with everything as though you already know that you'll win, even when you don't.

Adam, normal human that he is, lags behind Ronan. He's not really an _outdoorsy_ kind of guy. Still, he's in good shape and they don't go far before Ronan comes to a stop. Adam puts on a burst of speed and catches up with him at what turns out to be the top of a ridge. There's a large pool of water below, and a trickle running down the side of the rock face. In a more cinematic world, this would be a waterfall.

Ronan is leaning over the trickle to peer down at the pool. "How far do you think that is, twenty feet?"

Adam throws it a glance. "Probably more like thirty."

Ronan jumps.

Adam scrambles after him, runs smack up to the edge of the precipice with his hands grabbing at thin air. Ronan is already gone, hits the water with a crash of noise, before Adam can ask himself what he was even trying to do, anyway.

He peers down at the pool, waiting for Ronan to surface. He'll surface soon. He must have gone deep into the water, that's all, after how far he'd fallen. Assuming the water even is deep, and he hadn't just broken his neck -- 

Ronan's head pops up over the surface of the water. Adam grips his hand into a fist to fight down the urge to throw a rock at him.

"What are you waiting for?" Ronan shouts.

"I was waiting to see if you died, first!"

"I'm still alive. And you're still up there."

"Oh, Parrish, this is so, so stupid," Adam says, under his breath, as pulls his phone out of his pocket. Louder, he yells down, "Anyone ever tell you not to jump off a bridge after someone else?"

"Yeah," Ronan calls back. "So I jump first."

Adam teeters on the edge. He could walk down the path to the pool. He could walk back to the car. He could walk to a bus stop and join all the sane, normal people going about their sane, normal lives.

He says "goddammit" and jumps off the edge.

There's one long, thrilling, terrifying second of falling, too late to change his mind even if he wanted to. He doesn't think he wants to.

Then he hits the water.

"Fuck!" Adam yells, as soon as his face is above water. "Fucking -- shit -- fuck -- "

"Huh," Ronan says, idly treading water. "I thought you were going to chicken out."

" _Why is it so cold._ "

"Glacial runoff."

"This is the stupidest thing I've ever done." Adam swims to the shallows, starts to get out. It's even colder out of the water, soaked to the bone and getting hit by the merciless air. He drops back under the water level, sticks his face in, too. Maybe it will at least make his bruises feel better.

No such luck. It's _too cold to ice his eye,_ what the hell.

"Why did I do that?" he moans.

"You have too much pride," Ronan says, like that's obvious, which it's never been for anyone else before. "What I don't get is why you hit Kavinsky."

"He's an asshole."

Ronan swims over to the shallows, stands up half out of the water. If the cold bothers him, he doesn't show it. "He's always been an asshole. I never saw you care."

Adam scrubs his hands through his hair, trying to dry it off before any more freezing cold water can drip down the back of his neck. "There's knowing intellectually that someone's an asshole, and then there's having it shoved in your face."

"So you just don't like that he was rude to you."

"What do you want me to say?" he snaps, throwing his hands down with a splash. "Sorry I didn't let you punch him and get yourself expelled?"

It hits Adam too late what he's done. That he'd gotten in a fight. That he'd gotten in a fight _for Ronan's sake._ That he'd just _admitted that fact to Ronan._

He feels -- vulnerable, defenseless, a thousand times more so than when he'd been pinned down under Kavinsky in the hallway. He pulls himself up out of the water, cold be damned, so at least they're standing eye to eye.

"Every time I think I get you you do something like that." Ronan's looking at him, with his heavy all-seeing eyes, and Adam wants to ask him, _something like what, tell me, explain me to me._

Adam says, "I don't know what I'm doing anymore."

Ronan steps forward and kisses him.

Adam's lips are half numb from the cold, when Ronan's lips brush against them. He can hardly feel anything at all. Ronan's mouth over his, Ronan's fingertips on his jaw, just below his ear, but all of it phantom touches, so light it nearly isn't happening at all.

He didn't know that Ronan could be so delicate.

Adam is warm from his head to his toes.

The moment ends.

Ronan hauls himself up out of the water. Adam follows, more careful on the wet rocks, and then scrambles up the trail behind him. They stop at the top of the ridge so Adam can collect his phone, and then Ronan is on the move again, doesn't stop walking until he's back at the car. He sits behind the driver's seat, and in a daze Adam mimics him, doesn't even realize that he'll soak the car seat through until he's already done it. But it's Ronan's rental -- unless of course it really is stolen -- and if Ronan doesn't care -- 

Adam looks over. Ronan is starting the car, water dripping off of his dark eyelashes, muscles in his arm flexing -- he looks like some unholy combination of the human and the natural and the mechanical, a demigod bound for greater things than high school, a boy that Adam has only begun to understand and that he desperately needs the rest of.

Adam has no idea what he's doing anymore.

But whatever it is, he doesn't want to stop.

He leans over and kisses Ronan a second time, a third time, until he loses count, until it's just one endless kiss.


	5. damn, I was going for thoughtful

Adam has never regretted having a shift at work as much as he does that Friday afternoon, when he has to ask Ronan to drop him off, dripping wet and breathless, in front of his apartment.

Ronan does it, but he's clearly working up to something, frowning and tapping his fingers against the steering wheel, and Adam is both worried and eager for the question, for Ronan to say _you should ditch work_.

He thinks he'd do it, if Ronan asked.

Instead, Ronan's question is, "you working tomorrow?" with a little shrug like he doesn't care.

It's _so poorly executed_. Adam glows inside, unbearably hot and the best kind of suffocating, and decides that this is so much better, that Ronan is so nervous about asking him to hang out.

"Yeah," he says. "But only in the morning."

Ronan nods, nods again. His eyes flick over to Adam's mouth and then forward again, out the windshield.

Adam leans forward to kiss him goodbye -- or that's his plan. It turns into a conversation, rather than a simple farewell.

Adam clocks in late at work for the first time since he moved out of his parents' home, late for the first time that he's ever been excited about.

-

Ronan's outside his building when Adam comes home from work on Saturday, sitting on the hood of his car.

Adam keeps walking at exactly the same speed he's been walking. He wants equally to slow down and to speed up and run for him; the two impulses cancel each other out.

He also manages to stop himself from throwing anything at Ronan for finding parking when Adam himself had to park three blocks away, so it feels very unfair when Ronan throws something at him. It feels like a tube of toothpaste, but when he looks down at it it's in a language he can't read.

He tosses it back at Ronan, because when in doubt, do unto others as they do unto you.

"It's for your face," Ronan explains. Apparently Adam's lack of understanding is obvious, because Ronan reaches up and taps his own eye, mirror image of Adam's black eye. "It's _homeo_ pathic," he smirks, butchering the pronunciation in a very deliberate way. "I figured that's appropriate."

"Every part of what you just said is inaccurate," Adam says, standing in front of Ronan. He could put his hands on Ronan's knees from here. He doesn't.

Ronan uncaps the tube. It has a weird, stringent smell that doesn't make Adam want to touch it, at all.

And he doesn't need to. Ronan squeezes a dollop onto his finger and reaches up, slowly, for Adam's face.

Adam doesn't breathe. Even when Ronan's finger touches his face and his skin explodes with too many sensations: pain of being touched on a bruise; an after-flash of relief from the homeopathic foreign toothpaste that actually _works,_ who'd've thought; most of all, the tingling painful soothing wonderful awful knowledge that Ronan was _touching_ him, on his _face_.

"Fuck, this is a hell of a shiner," Ronan mutters. "Next time I get to fight Kavinsky."

Adam has to take a couple of shallow breathes before he can answer. "So we're giving up on the idea that there won't be another fight with Kavinsky."

"There's always another fight with that asshole, I don't know what the fuck he wants from me."

Adam has a pretty good idea what Kavinsky wants from Ronan, and he isn't going to get it. Because Adam has it, and he doesn't even realize that he's smiling at that thought until Ronan asks him, "what are you grinning about," and he is, he's smiling so wide that his face hurts, and he leans forward and kisses Ronan quickly, hard and closed mouth, and he pulls away just as suddenly.

"You have junk on your face," he tells Ronan. Some of the homeopathic cream has transferred from Adam's cheekbone to Ronan's.

Ronan just scowls at him and swipes his finger over his other cheekbone, spreads more of the cream across his face like war paint.

He's still amused by that, still thrilled at finding Ronan waiting for him -- God, how long was he waiting? -- but certain facts are making themselves more obvious the longer he stands in arm's reach of him. "I need a shower."

"Who are you trying to impress?"

"Well, you, for one."

"Waste of time," Ronan declares.

Adam bites his lip, hopes it looks flirty instead of nervous. He's not much of a flirt; _want to make out_ works fine on the Tad Carruthers of his school. He had tried to flirt with Ronan, but come to think of it, that had always backfired.

"Are you saying I can't impress you?"

Ronan is silent for a beat longer than Adam is expecting.

"Not if your strategy is _cleanliness_."

"Fine," Adam says, "then let's go."

"Go where?"

"Sorry, did you just want to sit on the hood of your car all day?" he asks, and then realizes he shouldn't put Ronan in a position to say _yeah, actually_. "Correction, _I_ think we should go somewhere."

Ronan huffs but jumps off the hood of the car, starts to walk down the street.

Adam walks beside him, slouching a little to avoid calling attention to the fact that he's following without question.

Or, no, not without question.

"I am so excited for your car to get stolen, you have no idea," he says. "I'm going to make a big banner, _congrats on never locking your car_."

Ronan looks over at him, and it flashes across Adam's mind, intrusive and unhelpful, that it would be very easy to kiss him right now. "So you're saying if my car gets stolen you'll make it up to me."

Adam lowers his voice, leans in a little closer, and is rewarded with a shocked stupid look that crosses Ronan's face for one split second, like it's also just occurred to him how close they are.

"I'm saying you should at least roll your windows up."

Ronan signs, expansively, and rubs a hand over the back of his neck.

"The upholstery's still drying," he mumbles.

Adam laughs and gives in to the inevitable, closes the tiny distance between them.

They walk. Adam's neighborhood is not a good neighborhood, but it's not like Ronan gives a shit about the dim lights in the Bartell's or the cracks in the sidewalk, and he'd only take it as a plus if someone tried to pick a fight with him.

Ronan touches his elbow, and Adam looks over, follows his gaze to a falling apart building with a CONDEMNED sign on it. Follows the look back up to Ronan's devilish smile.

"I'm going to die," Adam sighs, but doesn't fight it as Ronan uses the hold on his arm to pull him up the walkway.

"Everyone's going to die, you're not special."

The door is locked when Ronan tries the handle, but he just walks around the side of the building like nothing's wrong, finds a window. It turns out that the whole "condemned" thing means that it's pretty easy to break the window frame.

Adam looks twice to make sure that no one can see them, but he doesn't hesitate to climb in after Ronan.

Ronan heads straight for the staircase up to the second floor, because what you really want in an unsound structure is to get up off the ground.

"Definitely going to die," Adam mutters, and reaches for the hand rail.

The nearest strut of the rail breaks away from the wall, leaves the entire thing tilting precariously.

Ronan looks utterly delighted, places a hand on the rail up by the next strut and pushes down on it until it breaks off, too, along with a chunk of drywall. He jogs the rest of the way up the stairs, attacking the rail at every step, until he gets to the top and the entire thing falls with a muted thump and slides a few feet down the staircase.

That seems to slake Ronan's desire for chaos and destruction, at least, because when Adam turns and walks the other way into the house Ronan comes down and explores the ground floor with him.

They stumble into the remains of the kitchen. It's nice to see that someone's place is in worse shape than Adam's, even if it's someone who doesn't live here anymore. The faded remains of the decor are all done up in a tacky farmhouse style, and Adam remembers Ronan's comment about growing up in a barn. At the time he'd dismissed it as a joke. He thinks about it again, and thinks about the fact that Ronan doesn't say things for no reason.

"Where is there even a barn in Seattle for you to have grown up in?"

"I didn't grow up in Seattle," Ronan says, the minimum amount of information possible.

"Oh." Ronan is such an solid presence that it's odd to think he wasn't always right where he is now. "When did you move?"

He doesn't answer for a while, digging around through a pile of debris in the corner of the room.

"Junior high," he says abruptly, a piece of drywall in hand. "My little brother needed some help in school." He looks up, glares at Adam, who hadn't even had time to say anything. "He's not stupid or anything, he just needs shit explained to him the right way. My parents figured he could get more help in the city than out in fucking nowhere."

Adam thinks about Ronan, and how he doesn't say things for no reason. "It kind of sounds like you miss nowhere."

Ronan throws his piece of wall back at the wall. Which is its own answer, Adam supposes.

He opens a cupboard and recoils, because there's still food in there, what the hell.

He looks over a shoulder at Ronan and raises an eyebrow, _can you believe this shit?_

Ronan reaches over his shoulder, when he could easily have reached around instead, and that's distracting enough that he doesn't realize Ronan has grabbed a peanut butter jar until after he's already opened it and stuck a finger in it.

Adam makes a horrified face. That does not stop Ronan from sticking his finger in his mouth and _hmm_ ing, like he's considering the taste, which feels like the last thing anyone should be doing when they eat _ancient peanut butter from the pantry of a condemned house_.

Ronan points the jar at Adam, like maybe Adam is offended he wasn't offered a taste.

Adam takes the jar and throws it out of reach. It smashes against the window with a crash that makes him wince.

Ronan snorts, "nice," but over that sound Adam hears a siren -- squad car, not ambulance. He hears enough of both to tell the difference. And he _knows_ that a squad car with its siren going is too busy to worry about a couple dumb kids breaking into a condemned house, but he's a dumb eighteen-year-old kid with a record that he's kept painstakingly clean, so just to be sure, he puts a hand over Ronan's mouth and drags him down to a squat so they can't be seen from the windows.

In an impressive show of immaturity, Ronan licks his palm.

Adam starts to make a disgusted noise, "ugh -- "

Ronan very sarcastically put a hand over Adam's mouth.

Adam shoves him away. "My bad. I figured you wouldn't want to get arrested again."

Ronan makes a face, and Adam, suddenly, gets it, gets what should have been obvious before now.

"You've never been arrested, have you? You didn't really go to juvie sophomore year."

Ronan says, "that was the year my dad died," and then he gets up and walks out of the house.

Adam follows after him.

He wonders when, exactly, his life became a sequence of following Ronan Lynch.

"You're not going to say anything _nice_ , are you?" Ronan snaps at him, three or four blocks later.

"Nice isn't really in my wheelhouse."

Ronan huffs and shoves his hands deep into his pockets. "So, yeah. Dad died and apparently I didn't 'handle it well' and my grandparents convinced my mom that what I really needed was to go get sent to live with them in Ireland to find my _inner peace_ or some shit like that."

"I take it you really learned about inner peace."

"I learned that I don't want to live with my grandparents in Ireland."

They continue their walking tour of West Crapsville. Adam, feeling bold and daring in a way that he hadn't even upon breaking into a condemned building, shows Ronan his favorite restaurant, which is mostly his favorite because you can get a meal for five bucks and no one ever tries to make small talk with you.

Ronan takes in the ambiance and nods once, approving. Adam's heart thumps. It feels like more than it is, that Ronan doesn't turn his nose up at what is one very small part of Adam's life. But it feels like a beginning -- that Ronan doesn't turn his nose up at this, or Adam's having no friends, or working in a garage, means that maybe if Adam told him all of the other things that are wrong with him, _I'm an asshole, I'm dirt poor, I live by myself, I don't see my parents, I don't want to,_ teased out parts of his life piece by piece and showed them to Ronan, that maybe Ronan would accept them in that same matter-of-fact way.

It's a dizzying thought. Adam tries to focus on his sandwich.

"How's your food?" he asks. Ronan had sprung for fries. Adam swipes one without waiting to be offered any.

Ronan shrugs. "Not as good as that peanut butter."

"That peanut butter probably had e. coli. You're going to puke for a month and then die."

"You're not much of an optimist, huh."

"You get the right answer a lot more often by expecting the worst."

"You're not being graded right now," Ronan says. "It doesn't matter if you get the right answer."

"Of course it does," Adam says. "Who doesn't want to be right all the time?"

"Me," and okay, yes, that was as obvious of an answer as Ronan makes it sound.

There's a park across the way, a glorified empty lot with a couple of trash cans and benches scattered about. The weather's turned gray, threatening rain, so it's mostly deserted. Ronan sits down on the overgrown grass, watches Adam take a seat next to him.

Watches a little too closely, and when Adam quirks an eyebrow at him, _what_ , Ronan scowls and looks away.

Adam kicks his foot.

That gets him another scowl, and the rest of Ronan's attention again, like Ronan can't stop looking at him for some reason --

 _He wants to kiss you_ , Adam's brain belatedly informs him. It's obvious once he figures it out, from Ronan's defensive posture and the way his eyes keep darting around and the way one thumb is running nervously over his fingers, except that it doesn't make any sense. Ronan had kissed him by the pool; Adam had kissed him in the car, kissed him this morning in front of his apartment. Doesn't Ronan know he's allowed?

Adam thinks about showing him, taking the matter into his own hands, but the thought sends a spike of disappointment through him. He likes that Ronan's nervous. He wants to receive a kiss that's so fraught and important that it scares the otherwise fearless Ronan Lynch. He wants just once to be someone who's _chosen_ instead of _settled for_.

Just, he wants all of that _and_ to actually be kissed.

Adam locks his eyes, unsubtle, on Ronan's mouth, and leans in toward him just a fraction of an inch. Enough to say _do it, it's allowed, I'll jump with you --_

Ronan leans in the rest of the way and kisses him.

Adam kisses back, leaning in just a little more in case Ronan has any idea about breaking it off.

On the contrary, Ronan reaches up with one hand, cups it around the back of Adam's neck. Opens his mouth and runs his tongue over Adam's lips.

 _What's the right place to make out with a boy_ has a few different right answers; locked rooms at parties, cars in empty parking lots, the theater department's supply closet. _A public park on the middle of a Saturday afternoon_ is not a right answer.

Adam opens his mouth, makes a soft noise as Ronan slides inside.

Who wants to be right all the time?

-

Sunday morning, Ronan informs him, is family time, which sounds horrifying to Adam. Ronan doesn't seem to think that that's a weird thing to do, though, so he doesn't question it, just says, "I'm going to be at the library doing homework all day, anyway."

Which explains _how_ Ronan finds him at the library to drop into the seat next to him, kicking over the chair on the other side and scaring the daylights out of him. Adam still thinks he still gets pass on not having seen it coming.

"What happened to family time?" He keeps his voice low. The clatter of Ronan's arrival has already earned them a few glares, and he doesn't want to push his luck.

"It's two o'clock," which Adam hadn't noticed in his work-induced tunnel vision. "And Declan was being a shitfuck."

"What's a shitfuck?"

Ronan glares at him, exasperated. "It's a shit that's also a fuck, what does it matter?"

"I want to petition Webster's to add it to the dictionary, I need a formal definition and etymology."

"Oh, this is where it comes from." Ronan flips him off.

They're only getting more glares the longer they talk, so Adam emails his essay to himself before signing off the computer and dragging Ronan out of the library.

"What's the hurry?"

"We're leaving before you can get us kicked out."

"I know how to behave myself."

"You knocked over a chair and invented a profane portmanteau, that's not really library behavior."

"I have a limited amount of good behavior and I used it all up in mass this morning."

"So, again, you're not fit for the library." Adam is initially distracted by vindication, but as they walk away to nowhere in particular he processes the rest of Ronan's statement. "Isn't it awkward?"

Ronan looks at him, uncomprehending.

"Going to mass," Adam clarifies. "You're not supposed to be Catholic and -- " He doesn't know how to finish: _kiss me, touch me, look at me like that_.

Ronan shoves his hands in his pockets, but he doesn't refuse to answer. "After Dad died." He shrugs, stilted, and his shoulders don't come back down all the way, still tense up around his ears. "What was the point of trying to follow the rules anymore?"

"So you never. Did anything. Before junior year?"

They walk a few more blocks before Ronan says anything, Adam wincing all the while at his invasive and poorly phrased question.

"I never really wanted anyone before."

Ronan isn't looking at him, which lets him dig up the courage to meet that with the only answer it can deserve. "No one's ever wanted me before."

"Carruthers was pretty into you."

"He doesn't want me, he wants sex, anyone would do. People want things from me all the time. No one wants _me_ ," and he's not just talking about romance, now. He's terrified that Ronan can hear it, and even more terrified that he can't.

Ronan takes his hand and kisses him, just long enough for Adam to think _oh, thank God, he shut me up_.

They keep walking, and Ronan doesn't let his hand go. Adam shoots a glance at him, sideways.

Ronan catches him looking and frowns at him.

"I'm starving," Adam says, which is true, if not as true as _I was trying to figure out how much longer I got to enjoy holding your hand before you let go._ "I worked through lunch."

Ronan looks around at the closest businesses -- not much in the way of promising. Auto part shop, liquor store, nail parlor, shuttered storefront. They walk along until the first restaurant they see, and Adam is about to say, _I'm not that hungry_, except Ronan tugs him forward and he gets distracted.

It's some kind of theme restaurant, seafood but done up like rejected promo art for _The Little Mermaid_ ; someone missed the memo that this neighborhood isn't gentrifying yet. This time Adam has no fear about Ronan judging the place harshly, because he's judging it, too.

"It's like those cheesy prom posters," Adam says. Their school, outdoing itself on a lack of creativity, had picked _Under the Sea_ as the theme for prom, and covered the campus with posters that looked, well, a lot like this unfortunate decor.

"Don't fucking get me started on prom," Ronan says. "Gansey's disgusting enough about it already."

"Oh, God, what did he do?" Ronan just looks at him. "I know him just well enough to know that he did some really big stupid gesture to ask Blue to go to prom with him, and the suspense of wondering what it was is killing me."

"There was a _scavenger hunt_ ," Ronan says, in a tone more befitting _there was a severed head_. "In _verse_. It ended up on the football field with the marching band serenading her."

Adam groans a laugh and puts his head on the table.

"I don't know why the fuck they're so excited about a school dance," Ronan grumbles. "It's all the fun of a party except you have to be sneaky about drinking."

"I wouldn't know, I've never been to one." Adam's voice comes out wistful, for the life that he never had, the one where he got to worry about things like school dances.

Maybe that's just how you sound when you're resting your head on a table.

Ronan doesn't say anything for a while. Puts on a neutral voice to ask, "Do you _want_ to go?"

"God, no." Adam sits up. "I like this better."

"You should not-go to prom with me," Ronan says.

He smiles. "How does one _not-go_ to prom?"

"We go somewhere better than prom and we don't have to be sneaky about our drinking."

Adam drums his fingers on the table, buying time. "I don't know, I think I'll hold out for a big dramatic gesture, maybe some trained doves -- "

"If you want a bunch of bird crap on you, I can make that happen."

He's grinning too hard now to keep joking. "Yeah, let's do that," and just in case, he specifies. "Not-go to prom, I mean, not the bird crap."

Ronan puts his foot next to Adam's, presses their ankles together.

He doesn't even double down on the bird crap thing, which is a big gesture in its own way.

-

Ronan walks him home after lunch, and there's a second in front of the door where Adam thinks about inviting Ronan up to his apartment -- his apartment, that he rents, alone, with no relatives to play chaperone.

But he thinks about Ronan, who never really wanted anyone before, who was willing to at least entertain the idea of going to a school dance he'd hate if Adam wanted to, who brushes the back of his hand against the back of Adam's hand, carefully, like he's afraid of breaking it. He doesn't want to get Ronan alone like this.

Adam kisses him goodbye and steps into his building, and he waits long enough to be sure Ronan is gone before he leaves.

-

Adam knocks on the door, winces at how loud it is. He can't quiet the fear that someone is going to pop up and tell him to get out, tell him he shouldn't be here.

He knows he shouldn't be here, but he can't leave yet.

The second Cheng opens the door, blinking like this is the first light he's seen all day, Adam shoves the money in his hands.

"The deal's off."

Cheng rallies pretty quickly for a guy who probably just woke up. "But it is only one more week until prom. And Blue is taking Gansey -- "

"It's over, okay? I'm not doing this anymore," and Adam hurries away before Cheng can answer, fleeing from his guilt. It doesn't get rid of it entirely, but he feels better leaving it behind, looking ahead of him. What he _did_ doesn't matter; it's what he does from now on that counts.

-

He runs into Blue first thing on Monday morning, entering the school at the same time he is, and she zeroes in on him with alarming intensity. He kind of figured they were at a _smile and nod_ level of friendship.

"Adam!" She charges up to him, stops just short of tackling him. It would almost be an uncomfortable level of closeness except, well, they're sort of friends, and he cannot possibly bring himself to be afraid of her. "Are you okay?"

It's not asked like a casual greeting, _how are you_ , and that throws him off. "Yeah?"

She pitches her voice low. "I heard you broke up with Ronan."

"What?" Adam halts, stomach sinking through the concrete below. God, he'd screwed something up somehow; he'd been too needy -- or had he been too coy? Should he have invited Ronan up to his apartment after all? Or no, he shouldn't have kissed him so much, he overstepped -- "What did Ronan say?" and he hardly even cares how pitiful that sounds, _tell me what my boyfriend told your boyfriend about me_.

"Nothing," Blue says. "We didn't hear from him all weekend."

"But then -- who said we broke up?"

" _You_ did," Blue says, like that makes any sense. "You told Henry it was over."

Adam's stalled heart starts beating again so quickly that he nearly falls over. "I told Cheng the deal was off."

"So you aren't going out with Ronan anymore," Blue says slowly, trying to find the error in her math.

Adam breathes in, hesitates. "Well -- "

"Oh my God." A completely inexcusable smile breaks out over Blue's face. "You dumb assholes really did fall in love."

"No, we didn't," Adam mumbles, walking down the hall.

Blue dances after him. "I'm a genius."

"No you're not, leave me alone." Something has gone wrong with him, because underneath his embarrassment he's actually, a little bit, happy to have her grinning smugly like that.

They get within sight of his locker and there's another flash of twisted shame-and-joy, because Ronan's hanging out there waiting for him. Blue says, "yeah, _totally_ not in love," but she doesn't insist on hanging around to make matters any worse.

Adam steps up to his locker and spins in the combination, nodding a greeting at Ronan like it's no big deal to find him here.

Ronan nods back to him, far better at casual than Adam has ever achieved -- further proved by the fact that Adam can feel his cheeks heating up, just from that nod. God. He focuses in on his lock, because he's screwed up the combination three times in a row. Finally it opens.

The haphazardly stacked contents of his locker take this opportunity to fall out and onto the hallway floor.

"You're such a fucking mess, Parrish," Ronan says.

Adam crouches down to start picking up his stuff. "Like attracts like?"

"I thought opposites attract." Ronan squats down, too, but only so he can flick one of Adam's notebooks when he tries to pick it up. Adam's fault for thinking Ronan was going to be helpful.

"Magnets, maybe," he replies. "I think we've fairly well disproved that idea when it comes to _two guys dating_."

"Jerk."

"Well, yeah," Adam says again. "Like attracts like."

Ronan smirks at him and picks up a textbook that had fallen, propped up and pages spread out, impact fatality.

Adam leans to grab the notebook that Ronan sent flying, so he isn't looking at Ronan's face when he says, "what the hell."

He looks over, not concerned yet, and sees, on the floor underneath the book Ronan had just picked up, one of the ubiquitous _under the sea_ envelopes.

For a second, it makes even less sense to Adam than it does to Ronan; Ronan could at least have assumed that Adam bought the tickets before their conversation on Sunday. Adam knows that Ronan didn't buy them, and he knows he didn't buy them, so there isn't a single explanation for why a prom invitation is sitting in his locker.

And then Ronan picks the envelope up and flips it over, right side up, and on the front of the envelope is written in silver Sharpie, _in case you change your mind_.

Adam doesn't recognize the handwriting, but the _i_ in 'mind' is dotted with a smiley face that has hearts for eyes, so he has a pretty good idea.

"Why is Henry Cheng giving you prom tickets," Ronan asks, voice completely flat.

There is an answer to that question that solves everything. All he has to do is say that Cheng asked him to prom and Adam shot him down. Cheng would play along with that, if Adam asked him to.

But Adam hasn't lied to Ronan since the waterfall, since that baptism washing away the old lies, and he doesn't want to do it now.

"Please don't ask me that."

Ronan's head whips up to look at him, the expression in his eyes deadly. "Why is Henry Cheng giving you prom tickets?"

Adam breathes. _Don't open it, don't --_ "He wants me to take you to prom."

"Why the fuck does he care about that?"

Adam doesn't answer. If he doesn't answer he can't lie.

Ronan breaks off eye contact, and in that moment Adam knows, even before he rips open the envelope, that he's lost.

Two prom tickets flutter out. To Adam's horror, but not his surprise, they're paper clipped to a wad of hundred dollar bills.

Ronan's voice is pure poison. "What's the money for, Parrish?"

Adam opens his mouth and says, "it's a bribe."

Ronan shoots up to his feet, towering over Adam.

Adam doesn't _want_ to look at him, doesn't want to see outrage or disgust or violence, not on that face, not pointed at him; but he can't help it. They are magnets after all, drawn together, complete opposites, honor and lies, deserving and undeserving.

"Fuck off and die," Ronan says, and storms off down the hall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end!
> 
> Nah, there's three more chapters, but that would be pretty fucked up, wouldn't it?


	6. 'hates him with the fire of a thousand suns,' that's a direct quote

Adam has never had cause to look for Cheng's locker before, but he knows which one it is; everyone does, it's the one with SWAG painted on it in six-inch glitter letters that the janitor has given up on trying to remove.

If Adam thought about it he would realize that Cheng might not be at his locker. That he he should track him down somewhere more definite. Somewhere more private.

But Cheng is there, and Adam isn't thinking.

The locker is open and Cheng is chatting with someone to his left. Adam slams the door shut with a loud crash that makes Cheng jump out of his skin.

Throwing the envelope down at his feet ought to be anticlimax, after that -- the paper-light weight of it only flutters to the ground slowly -- but Cheng's reaction makes up for the lack of drama. He locks eyes on it and doesn't look up, even when Adam leans right up into his face.

"I told you," he says, tight controlled rage that makes his stomach turn, "it's off. Stay the hell away from me."

Cheng says nothing. Adam doesn't know him well, but he knows that look, he knows that silent inner chorus: _I fucked up, I fucked up_.

It doesn't make him feel any better.

He punches Cheng's stupid glitter locker again.

That doesn't make him feel any better, either. He wants --

\-- nothing reasonable.

He walks away.

"Adam!" she calls after him, and he should have known that the person Cheng was talking to was Blue; should have noticed her, should have been paying attention to his surroundings, should have realized the universe hates him that much.

Well, he knows now, and he doesn't care.

She runs after him for the second time today, catches up despite the sheer impossibility of legs that short moving with any kind of speed. This time she does breach his defenses, places a hand in the bend of his elbow and peers at his face. He doesn't let it stop him from walking.

"What _happened_?"

"Let me go."

She lets go but doesn't stop following him. "You were fine five minutes ago and now you're -- " She waves hands at him, trying to capture the whole dark thundercloud that he has turned into.

He walks faster.

" _Please_ just tell me you're okay." He gives her nothing. "Is Ronan -- "

The name tears words out of him. " _Shut up_."

She blinks, and then her face goes outraged. "I get that you're upset but you don't get to talk to me like that."

"You don't get to talk to me at all. _Get it_?"

She tilts her head up, hurt but proud, and Adam knows that look, too. "Got it. Have fun being an asshole," and then she leaves him alone, just like he wanted.

-

The week drags on, endless slow torture on top of the torture that is high school. The campus had always seemed so huge to Adam, so full of people passing by him without notice. Now it's tiny. Every time he turns around he sees Cheng or Blue or Gansey -- _God_ , who knows what the hell anyone's told Gansey. He almost goes up and asks him one day, _so, have you heard how I fucked over your best friend_ , but at the last minute he chickens out.

He wonders if Gansey is going to have to dump Blue now that Ronan has dumped him, out of creepy bro solidarity.

He wonders where Ronan is, that he doesn't ever run into him, if he's stopped coming to school, if he's going to get kicked out after all.

He can't even catch a break outside of school. He eats at the sandwich shop and thinks about Ronan. Goes to the library to use the computers and thinks about Ronan. Takes the long way to the bus stop and walks past the condemned building and thinks about Ronan.

He goes to work, and Boyd tells him to get Ronan's BMW ready for pick up.

Adam does the exit inspection and clean up as fast as humanly possible, or he tries to; his stupid hands keep shaking. He finishes the paperwork and leaves it on the hood with the keys and then he goes and hides as deep as he can in the stock room, eyes shut and breathing, slow and ragged.

Which means that by the time the other mechanic on shift finds him, he's already pissed at having to look all over the place. "Boyd wants you in the office."

"The car's ready," Adam protests.

"Now," so Adam goes, with the slow tread of a man walking to his execution.

Except when he gets to the office, Ronan's not there, just a boy Adam vaguely remembers from school.

"This guy says he's here to pick up the BMW." Boyd thwaps Adam's clipboard at him, less to hand it over and more for the dull smack as it hits his chest. "He's not on the paperwork."

"I have the keys," not-Ronan says.

 _Oh_ , Adam realizes, _Ronan can't stand to look at me,_ which is fair. It's not like he can make make eye contact with himself in the mirror.

So he lies. "The owner told me someone else would be picking it up. Noah Czerny, right?" and he wouldn't have expected that he'd be able to pull the name of the quiet kid from his sophomore history class, but maybe there's something to that adrenaline rush superpower thing.

"You gotta write this shit down on the forms, Parrish." Boyd jabs him with a pointed finger on every word, but it barely registers. "You keep customers waiting because you screw up, then maybe I'll find someone who can do your job right."

He lets the angry words wash over him -- he's good at that, knows just the right angle to cast his eyes, down and away but not so far that it looks like he isn't listening, like he's thinking about standing up for himself -- and then he has to show Noah to the garage.

He preferred Boyd's diatribe. Noah looks like he knows exactly why Ronan wouldn't come pick up the BMW for himself, like he knows exactly what Adam is.

-

Prom night is awful.

Adam had swapped his shifts around last weekend -- Sunday, after leaving Cheng's -- so that he could have the night off. At the time it had been thrilling. Now he wishes he could just once have been less efficient. He wishes he had work to keep him busy.

He leaves home when he realizes that he's just been staring out the window sulking for an hour, goes for a drive to clear his head. Realizes as he's parking that he's back at the trail head where he'd jumped off a ledge one week before.

Funny. He hadn't even thought that he remembered how to get here. His subconscious feeding him information again, except this time it isn't a help, at all.

He gets out of the car and walks down the trail. The wound is already open, why not claw it open further?

He wishes it were darker; the place probably looks completely different at night, transformed by moonlight. The sky's still light, even if at eight o'clock the sun's not overhead; curse of a summer night.

Adam sits at the ledge, dangles his legs over. It takes an act of courage; the pool's a lot further down than he remembered. He can't believe that he ever jumped off this.

There's a scuffle somewhere behind him, back on the trail. God, he hopes it's an animal; he doesn't want to see anyone right now. He looks over his shoulder, prepared to leave if it's another human being.

It's Ronan.

Adam stares. He can't leave. He couldn't move now if someone offered him a million dollars.

( _Yes you would, you'll do anything for money, won't you_?)

"You're thorough." Ronan says. Adam thinks that _thorough_ may be the very worst name anyone has ever called him. "Just have to ruin everything."

"I didn't know you'd be here." His voice comes out even, and he's relieved, and he hates it. He doesn't want Ronan to know how badly shaken he is. He doesn't want Ronan to think that he came here to ruin anything of his. "I can leave." He does not want to leave.

"No," Ronan says, " _stay_ ," and Adam flinches at the nastiness compressed into that one word.

Ronan comes and sits at the edge of the bluff. There is no moment of hesitation, no need to gather his courage.

He doesn't sit right next to Adam, but he's close enough that they could hold hands, if they both reached out.

They don't reach out. Ronan plops a six pack of beer down in between them. Adam blinks. He hadn't even noticed Ronan was carrying anything, had been too hungry for the sight of his face.

Ronan grabs one of the bottles, pops the cap off with a sudden fast gesture that makes Adam flinch away from the force of it. He sets the beer down on the ground, and Adam only realizes that it's for him after Ronan opens a second one and takes a long, long pull from it.

"Here's to prom," Ronan says, holding his half-empty bottle up in a sarcastic toast. "Just like we said. The two of us, no school dance, don't have to be sneaky about our fucking drinking -- "

"Don't."

"Why the _fuck_ not?" and there's nothing sarcastic about that anger.

Adam doesn't say anything. There isn't a logical argument he can make, only an appeal to affection, which Ronan clearly has none of for him.

Ronan throws back the rest of his beer and tosses the bottle over the ledge. Adam hears it break, and he hates it: glass shards polluting their beautiful pool, except Adam had polluted it first.

"I would have said that look on your face meant you were upset," Ronan tells him. "But I guess I never really knew what the hell was going on with you."

"I never lied to you about anything except the money."

"That's one hell of an exception, don't you think?"

Adam breaks. "Ronan -- "

"No," Ronan snaps at him. "No, you don't get to be sad about this, you don't get to make me feel sorry for you. I trusted you and you lied to me."

Tiny, he says, "I'm sorry."

"I don't want _sorry_. You fucking owe me. Something secret, something that no one knows."

Ronan wants to humiliate him. Adam could do that. Four words and he could give Ronan the power to destroy him: _my dad beat me_.

He's never said it before, to anyone. He could say it now, to Ronan, to pay his debts.

But it wouldn't work. It would be too much like making an excuse, like asking Ronan to forgive him out of pity, and he won't do that to Ronan.

He looks straight at Ronan's tired face and says, "No."

Ronan kicks the entire six pack over the edge of the bluff when he leaves.

-

The Taming of the Shrew premieres. Apparently it's pretty good, if you allow for the age of the performers and the sexist nature of the subject material.

Adam doesn't go to see it.

-

"Hey, Adam," and nothing Tad Carruthers wants to say could ever qualify as good news. "Want to sign my yearbook?"

"Sorry, I'm in a rush," Adam says, and ducks into a random classroom the next time that he sees Tad in the hallway. He hopes that whoever invented the concept of _yearbooks_ died alone and miserable.

-

"Grad night!" a far too enthusiastic girl yells, shoving a flier in Adam's face. It's _seven o'clock in the morning_ , what drugs is she on? "This Friday! Sign up!"

Adam hands the flier back to her. "No."

-

You're supposed to learn valuable lessons in high school. Adam thinks the most valuable thing he's learned is to be more careful about who he incurs a debt to.

Seriously, no one even _likes_ Whelk as a teacher, so why is he the faculty adviser to two different clubs? Drama club is basically done for the year, now that their spring play has come and gone, but it turns out he's also the adviser for the _mythology club_ , which Adam didn't even know was a thing until Whelk informs him that they need someone to help drive them to their competition ( _mythology club has competitions,_ what the fuck).

Adam thinks about telling him to go to hell -- he's gotten his letter of recommendation, and Whelk can't tank his grade that badly without risking the office noticing. But he's too tired to argue. He agrees, and then Whelk gives him a roster of the students in mythology club and he wishes that he'd had more fight in him.

He does, at least, make sure that _Matthew Lynch, sophomore_ , ends up in a different car, and then he spends his entire Saturday afternoon sitting in his car rather than going in and seeing what a _mythology club competition_ looks like, anyway, rather than risking seeing if Ronan's beloved little brother looks like him.

When the competition is over (they acquitted themselves with honor on the field of battle, according to the nerds in his back seat), Adam drives faster than he ought to back to campus to get this over and done with.

It backfires, because he's the first car back, and Ronan's BMW is already there, waiting to pick up his brother.

Adam parks on the opposite end of the lot, chases the nerds out of his car, and leaves his engine on. He's going to drive away. He's going to leave. Really.

He's just going to give it a few minutes, first.

He isn't disappointed. Whatever emotion falls on him when the passenger door opens, it's much more complicated than disappointment.

Ronan slams the door shut before he speaks.

"How much was I worth?"

"Five hundred dollars."

He snorts. "At least you're not _cheap_."

Adam winces.

"You didn't say that Sargent was involved."

"I didn't see the point in making anyone else unhappy."

"Sure. What's one more lie?"

"You may not appreciate the distinction between lying and keeping a secret that isn't yours to share, but I do."

"Secrets, lies, it's all the same with you."

"Right," Adam says, voice flat. "I'm a liar. I don't know what you're going to get from me at this point."

"Say it. You owe me that much."

Adam shuts his eyes. _My dad beat me and I let him do it, I let him because I didn't want anyone to know --_

"No."

"Should've fucking known," Ronan mutters.

"Not every secret is a lie," Adam says. "Sometimes they're how you survive."

Ronan doesn't say anything. Adam ought to take that as a mercy.

"I liked you, Ronan." _I still like you,_ but he doesn't get to say that part. Sometimes secrets are how you survive, and sometimes they're how other people survive you. "I screwed up. I hope the next guy doesn't screw up, too."

Another car pulls into the parking lot. Ronan kicks the door open and slams it shut behind him.

-

"I know you've all turned your brains off now that AP exams are over," Whelk tells his English class, handing back essays for revision, "but you do actually need to work."

Adam feels like his brain has never worked harder. He can't stop thinking about secrets, and lies, and whether there even is a difference. About whether secrets are how you survive or whether there the thing that kills you.

There's so many things that no one knows about him. Who would he have told? He never had anyone willing to take care of him for half a year just so he could realize he hated them. He never had anyone who would put their own happiness on hold until he'd gotten himself together. He never had anyone he loved so much that it would ruin his life to lose them.

He'd always kind of figured that was a superpower of his, a lack of weaknesses, but now he's not so sure, because the days are ticking down to graduation and instead of feeling victorious he feels like he's going insane.

"I've never had anyone miss me," he tries out, sharing it with his empty bedroom, late at night after the lights are out. "I have one person who misses me, and he wishes he didn't."

It's a cold comfort, but still a comfort, to know that he can tell the truth from a lie, so when he sees the phone number on a community outreach board at the library he calls it and asks the volunteer on the other end about support groups.

-

Adam shows up at the rec center at ten after five, having spent the last fifteen minutes in his car trying not to psych himself out.

He was expecting -- folding chairs in a circle, fluorescent lights, dim and depressing.

Instead there's a dinner table set up with an actual table cloth, set up in a side room off the main hall, with no one else around. Adam thinks he's in the wrong place. He's not sure what the hell this place _is_ , but it can't be meant for him.

Then a girl a few years younger than Adam pops into the room with a bowl and sets in on the table. "Oh!" She startles when she sees him and runs back through the door she came through.

Adam follows her at a distance and finds half a dozen kids, tossing salad and stirring things in pots on the industrial stove and one heartbreakingly young boy folding napkins in half.

"Hello," a dreamy voice says from behind him. Adam turns to find a woman with a billowy head of white-blonde hair, incongruously holding an enormous knife. "Are you here for dinner?"

"I came for a meeting? The -- support group?" Adam is more convinced than ever that he's in the wrong place.

"Oh, the meeting is after dinner. Here," and she holds the knife out to him, handle first and definitive, so that Adam takes it without a second thought. "I don't like to let the little ones chop vegetables, but you look like you won't cut your fingers off."

"No?" Apparently this _is_ the place he was looking for. He's still not convinced it's the place he's supposed to be.

"What do we call you?" the woman asks him.

He breathes deeply, readies himself for an interrogation. "Adam."

"Adam. Please chop the carrots, we can't have salad without carrots," and then she floats off to help one of the girls at the stove.

He chops carrots, because what else is he supposed to do at this point?

It's fifteen minutes more in the kitchen before dinner is ready, and then five minutes getting all the food transported to the table, a chaotic enough process that Adam almost forgets to worry about where he is.

But then he's sitting down between two kids he doesn't know and the group leader -- who the kids all easily refer to as _Persephone_ , no _Doctor_ this or _Miz_ that -- says, "Adam is joining us tonight," and that's it, this is the part where he has to _talk_ about it. He sits completely still, braces himself to be questioned, to justify himself, to scrape at his own wounds. Whatever she says next, he's ready for it.

Except what Persephone says next is, "Josie, pass the salad around, and everyone eat something green."

The youngest boy says, "boogers are green!" to which half the kids laugh and half the kids say "gr _oss_ " and the girl that Adam startled when he arrived passes him a salad bowl and then dinner is just -- dinner. The kids laugh and talk and get reminded to chew with their mouth closed. The food is plain to the point of boring, but that helps on top of the weirdness of everything, to have a very ordinary bowl of salad and a very ordinary plate of spaghetti and a very ordinary and very burnt piece of garlic bread.

Persephone presides over dinner calmly and largely in silence, turning a blind eye toward tomato sauce spills on the table cloth and squabbles over the biggest piece of bread. She spends most of the meal letting the girl next to her talk her ear off about, as far as Adam can tell, My Little Pony. The boys on his left are complaining about math homework, and Josie and the girl on her right spend a lot of time whispering about something that culminates with Josie telling him, shyly, "I like your shirt," and before he can think how he's supposed to respond to that, her friend giggles and Josie giggles and they go back to whispering.

It's only after they've scraped their dishes clean and left them to soak in the industrial sink in the kitchen that it really becomes a _meeting_ , like he was expecting. And even then -- he's less surprised, now, starting to get a feel for how Persephone works -- it begins "does anyone want to talk about their week?" like it's that simple, they could talk about anything from the week, or if no one wanted to, they wouldn't talk at all.

Josie's friend raises a hand. She isn't giggling anymore. "My mom called me again today." Her voice wavers when she says it, and Josie reaches over and holds her hand, and Adam doesn't think he's in the wrong place anymore.

-

Adam doesn't talk all that first meeting, just sits there, twitchy and nervous and so fucking sad for all of the kids who do talk. He's grateful that no one makes him go, because he doesn't think he could _do_ what these kids are doing, for all that they're younger than him. He has no idea how they hold their scars up for each other to see, when he's just feeling worse and worse because all he can think about is himself.

Persephone steers the conversation with an easy grace -- a gentle question _here_ that gets someone to release the words they're holding onto, a soft redirect _there_ when they aren't ready to let go yet, a kind but firm command when one kid gets less than supportive. By the end of the night, most of the circle has spoken, without Persephone forcing a direct question on anyone, and while there's some tear tracks, no one's more broken than they came in.

The only time that Persephone makes Adam speak is after dinner, when they're all washing dishes and cleaning up the kitchen.

"Do you need a safe place to stay?"

"No," Adam says, "I -- I have my own place. I'm eighteen, I don't even know if I should be here in a kids' group -- "

She looks through him, with those misleadingly dreamy eyes. 

"I'm safe, now," he finishes feebly. "I'm just. Processing it, I guess."

"Take your time, Adam. You're exactly where you should be." Persephone steps away. "And be careful with the dishes, they're older than you are."

-

He still feels disjointed the next morning, bits and pieces pretending to be one human. The part that feels things isn't hooked up right to the part that makes decisions, or maybe it's always been that way.

In either case, he can't bring himself to do anymore than raise his eyebrows at Blue when she corners him leaving Calculus.

"Gansey's having a party," she says. "I want you to be there."

"I think we both know that isn't a good idea."

She crosses her arms, body confrontational but words soft. "I'm worried about you."

"I'm fine," Adam says. "I take care of myself."

"Yeah, I know. You take care of yourself and you don't do anyone's homework for them and you'll build the sets for the play but you won't make a single friend on the cast." She scowls. "You just have to be a closed system, don't you?"

"I _was_ ," and suddenly everything snaps into place. His emotional parts are having no trouble talking to the rest of him now. They may be the only part of him that exists. "I was a closed system and I liked it that way and everything was _fine_ until _you_ had to interfere."

Blue's face transmutes, sorrow and pity and hurt.

Adam steps away, feeling nauseous.

"I hate this," she says. "I want to fix it."

"You can't." He won't say it, he won't, _he won't_ \-- "If you want to take care of someone so badly, take care of Ronan," and it doesn't even have the decency to sound like a blow off. He tries one more time, "I'm fine," and Blue doesn't look convinced, at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the third time I've written some version of "guy asks woman for help, she makes him chop vegetables" and I don't know what that says about me. Like, damn, id, that's a really specific need we have.


	7. don't say shit like that to me, people can hear you

Adam shows up at the next support group meeting. What else is he going to do? One by one the things that eat up his time are falling away. He fills out the _incoming freshman_ paperwork for college. He finishes Whelk's stupid essay. His second job hires a crop of summer employees and slashes his hours.

He graduates, and it's less of a victory than he'd always thought. It isn't even a relief.

Ronan doesn't walk. They don't call his name. Adam wonders if he graduated.

So he goes to meetings, and chops a lot of vegetables, and it's even sadder than it sounds: he starts to look _forward_ to his child abuse survivor support group. Never mind that he's got four years on the next oldest kid, that he never talks about himself, that he doesn't fit in at all.

It turns out that a lot of the kids are in summer school, either because their foster parents don't have any time to help them with homework, or because they missed too many days during the school year, or because "I'm just stupid," Robbie says, eight years old and already convinced he's worthless.

"You're not stupid," Adam says, without meaning to, and burns under the weight of everyone's eyes turning toward him; but he couldn't keep his tongue, remembering the night that his father had thrown his SAT prep book in the trash, _what good is this going to do you,_ and then he'd had to find the money to pay the library fine. "There's no such thing as stupid. If you're going to play make believe you should pick something cooler."

Robbie considers this. "I want to be a knight."

"Actually, knights are real," Adam says, "so you could become a knight." He feels pretty fucking stupid himself, saying it, but -- not in the way that these kids think of as stupid.

He goes to meeting and hears two of the boys complaining about the metric system and he tells them that _King Henry Died Monday Drinking Chocolate Milk_ , which he can't believe no one has bothered to tell to them before; how does anyone expects kids to remember these things without mnemonics. Josie and her friend ask him if he has any tricks for trigonometry. Robbie needs to recite a poem, so Adam goes and gets Shel Silverstein out of the library and helps him pick one to memorize.

He's still not a peer, exactly, but the younger kids decide, unanimously, to treat him like something between a teacher and an older brother.

He notices Opal when she joins the group, of course. She's the first new kid since Adam, as young as Robbie and even smaller, and just as silent as he'd been at his first dinner: she'd be hard not to notice. But he doesn't think about her much at first, because it's the same meeting where he steps in, reason and sympathy and firmness, when one of the kids says something that leaves another in tears, and by the time he realizes that it had been Persephone's place to intervene, not his -- by the time he looks up, wondering why she _hadn't_ intervened -- he sees her looking at him, cool thoughtful eyes, and he freezes.

He wants to tell her, _don't trust me with their happiness_. He wants to tell her, _I can't even make myself happy_. He wants to tell her, _the last time someone trusted me I betrayed him, don't do this to me, don't make anyone else hate me_ , but she has him pinned down under that all-seeing gaze and she just shakes her head once, like she hears his surrender and she doesn't accept it.

So he doesn't give Opal much thought, at first, and if that's a failure in his new role as "older brother," well, at least he's used to screwing up.

-

Persephone catches him alone at the end of the last meeting in June.

"Your birthday is next week."

"Do I have to stop coming?" It's pathetic how much he doesn't want that to be true, but he's not sure why he's allowed to be here at all. Surely someone's going to notice that he's nineteen years old, surely there's some kind of legal or medical or financial issue; but he still has too much time on his hands and no summer plans, and he likes helping the kids write their homework questions about US history and Judy Bloom and the scientific method.

"No, and please don't ask me that again, it's distracting," Persephone says. "I won't tell any of the kids if you don't want, but I think we should have a celebration."

Adam shuffles his feet. "I don't really need that." His own plans for his birthday hadn't included anything except the vague idea of using Patrick Verona's ID to go to a bar, and when that had struck him as suitably depressing he'd thrown the driver's license away to remove the temptation.

"The kids would enjoy it. They look up to you, you know."

Adam does know that, though he doesn't really know why. If anything, he looks up to them, these kids who are so much braver and more honest in their recovery. He looks up to them and he's terrified of them: how long they've been working on healing and how much it's still fucking them up. Maybe this was the real reason that he never tried to escape, the real reason he never told anyone; maybe he wanted to put off this process for as long as possible because it's going to take forever and _suck_ the whole time.

"I'm not really anything special," he says.

Persephone looks through him, long enough that he starts to squirm before she lets him off the hook.

"You've shown them that they can get out of their situations and be strong enough to help others and go to college -- and of course everyone likes an excuse to have cake."

Adam can't really say no to that, so he agrees.

By now the rest of the kids have been picked up, except for Opal, who is sitting on the stairs outside and tapping her heels on concrete. She's fidgeting with a bracelet on her left wrist. Adam's seen her wearing it before, but he's never looked closely at it before.

Now he realizes that it isn't a bracelet at all; it's a necklace with a broken clasp, that she's wrapped around her wrist a couple of times and tied in a sloppy, insecure knot.

"I could fix that for you," he says.

She looks up at him, cool eyes curious but not surprised. She's been listening to him since he'd opened the door and stepped outside. She still carries that hyper-aware vigilance that some of the kids have started to shed.

Adam taps his own left wrist.

She doesn't respond.

"If you want," he continues.

She curls around the necklace protectively.

"Or not," he says, easy. "I'm not going to take it away. Tell you what, I'll bring pliers to the next meeting. If you want me to fix it I'll do it, and if you don't, I won't bring it up again."

She still says nothing.

Adam walks down the stairs, leaving an exaggerated space between them, and loiters by the corner of the building. Outside, he's casual, propped up against the wall. Inside, he's crippled with self-doubt. Opal still doesn't talk in meeting, not even during dinner, when the rest of the kids are gabbing about homework and baseball games and some cartoon Adam's never seen that sounds weirdly upsetting to be aimed at children. Which means that he doesn't know her story, how she ended up here. Maybe it was her brother, someone who looks like him, and he's going to give her flashbacks.

He pulls a book out of his backpack and pretends to read it, keeps an eye on the silent child on the stairs. They don't talk. Eventually Opal gets picked up by her guardian, an effortlessly glamorous woman who leaves Adam tongue-tied and clammy whenever he sees her, and he's free to head back to his quiet apartment for the night.

-

He arrives the next week to discover that he is, for the first time since his first time, the last person to arrive. All of the other kids are already crammed into the kitchen making an enormous mess and also, as an afterthought, a cake.

They shoo him out of the kitchen and tell him that he's not allowed to help, though honestly he'd rather do some of the work and have an edible result.

Opal's setting up the table when he enters the main room of the rec center. When she sees him she walks right up to him and holds out her wrist.

Adam suppresses a smile and very gently unwraps the necklace from her wrist. It only takes him a minute to fix it, using a pair of pliers and a clasp that he'd bought at the craft store. He's glad the clasp is a good fit; he'd had to eyeball it with only a rudimentary idea of what he was looking for.

He offers it to her, "need help putting it on?"

She shakes her head and doesn't let him help her, puts it on herself, peering cross-eyed at the clasp and trying a few times before she can get it hooked on right.

Adam sits between Opal and Robbie at dinner. Robbie chatters away about his new pet fish, who bears the unfortunate moniker of _Floppy_. Opal keeps shooting him overwhelmed looks as Josie tells her how cute her necklace is and compliments the braids in her hair. Adam grins back at her, equal parts supportive and amused.

They clear the dishes away, and Persephone asks her usual question, "does anyone want to talk about their week?" and Adam knows it's his moment.

"It was my birthday this week," he says, and all of his kids look up at him. "Last year I spent my birthday moving out of my parents' house, because I was finally old enough to get my own place." He breathes in. "My whole life, my dad hit me and my mom let him."

There's a single moment of silence, and then a voice he's never heard before pipes up, right next to him:

"Fuck them."

"Thanks, Opal." Adam looks down at the table with half a laugh. "I mean, you shouldn't use words like that, but I appreciate the sentiment." He breathes deep. "So, yeah. I never told anyone. It always felt like the most important thing in the world, to keep anyone from ever knowing. But...I don't want to live in that world anymore, where that's the most important thing."

He looks up and sees Persephone nodding at him. His kids all around the table are nodding and smiling at him.

Adam breathes in a lungful of air that's so clean and light it could sweep him away.

That's all that he says, but that's all he can say, and that's maybe all that he needs to say. The whole world has gone a little muted and a little sharp, and he's moving at half-speed while he figures out how it all fits together.

His children are far less gung-ho about doing dishes than they were about making cake -- it offers neither glory nor frosting -- so no one objects to him helping clean up. He's used to being the last person to leave, and he thinks that this week is no exception, until he steps out of the rec center and sees Opal sitting on the stairs again.

Persephone is following behind him, clutching a shawl to her neck like a heroine in a Victorian novel. "Opal, let me see if I can get your foster family on the line," and she steps away to make a phone call.

Adam looks down at Opal. "Do you want me to wait with you?"

Opal nods, so this time Adam sits down on the stair next to her while they wait. He pulls the pliers out and lets her play with them; digs deeper into his pockets and finds a paperclip she can play with, too, once she starts grabbing at pebbles with the pliers and making dinosaur _rawr_ noises. He figures a paperclip will still be fun, while also being less likely to ruin his tool.

Opal has fashioned the paperclip into a jagged zigzag lightning stab by the time that Adam hears an engine purring along near them.

He looks up to see a BMW pulling into a parking spot across the way and _freezes._ Because he recognizes that bumper. Because he _built_ that bumper.

The car comes to a stop; engine dies, lights go out. The driver's side door opens.

Adam doesn't even blink.

Instead of Opal's gorgeous foster mother coming to pick her up -- it's Ronan.

Opal doesn't hesitate; she bolts upright, runs forward with Adam's pliers still in hand, charges straight at Ronan and throws her arms around him in a death grip that could, charitably, be called a hug.

Ronan rubs his hand roughly over her scalp, leaving her short shorn hair sticking up every which way.

Then he looks up and locks eyes with Adam on the stairs.

To his credit, he doesn't freeze for anything like as long as Adam does; only for a moment, nearly imperceptible, if you weren't watching as closely as Adam is, as closely as you can when that's the only thing in the world that exists.

"Go wait in the car," Ronan tells Opal.

Opal bares her teeth and growls at him, with all of the ferocity of a guard dog.

Ronan bares his teeth and growls right back.

Opal stands her ground for a second, as though to show she can, before she runs for the car and clambers into the driver's seat.

Ronan looks back at Adam, and he's somehow fiercer when he isn't baring his teeth.

"What the _fuck_ are you doing here?"

Adam says, "I'm working through my secrets," and he watches as Ronan _gets it_.

"You're not the first person I told," Adam continues. "Sorry. I know I owed you something I'd never told anyone before, but this wouldn't have helped either of us."

Ronan curls his fingers into a fist, then flexes them out again, like he's been training himself against that gesture. Adam supposes, if Opal is his foster sister, that he probably has. Ronan was always considerate, in his own way.

"I didn't want you to gut yourself."

Adam snorts. "Yes, you did."

"I wanted you to want me back so I could turn you down," Ronan snaps. "I was trying to break your stupid heart."

"God, is that all?" Adam props his chin up on his hand. "Well, damn, Ronan, you did. Congrats."

Ronan stares at him, wordless.

A loud _honk_ splits the air. Adam doesn't need to look through the BMW's rear windshield to know that Opal is leaning on the car's horn. God, she really has found the perfect family, hasn't she?

Adam thinks, that if only one of them gets to get this right, that he's glad it's Opal.

"You should take Opal home," he says, and stands and walks back into the rec center, away from the still-mute Ronan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter today, but tomorrow is the conclusion!


	8. not even a little bit, not even at all

Persephone has already told Adam twice that he doesn't have to leave the group, in a certain way like he isn't _allowed_ to leave the group, and after all, his kids did more to celebrate his birthday than anyone else ever has. So he keeps going to meetings, arrives early to help Persephone get things ready, leaves late to help clean up, even though Ronan picks up Opal from the next meeting, and the meeting after that. Like he's keeping an eye on Adam, watching for any sign that Opal's health and happiness isn't safe with him.

Which is exactly what Adam wanted, someone to keep an eye on him before he screwed up and hurt his kids. There's no reason for it to piss him off. It's a blessing, really.

It's just that it's Ronan of all people who is judging him -- but Ronan, of all people, has the right to say that Adam isn't trustworthy.

So he goes to meetings, same as always. He talks to Opal the same as he talks to any of his kids, feels weirdly pleased that she talks back to him sometimes, in actual real words. He ignores the way that Ronan looks at him, the way it makes him feel, rage and sorrow and longing and underneath it all a hideous pathetic _happiness_ at having recaptured Ronan's attention.

This, though.

This is _not on_.

Adam tolerates Ronan's presence for the few minutes it takes for Opal to be coaxed, prodded, or ordered into the car at the end of every meeting. That does not mean that Ronan is allowed to stand in front of his apartment building with his hands cupped to his mouth, shouting "Parrish!" loud enough for the entire block to hear.

Adam throws the window open and sticks his head out. _"What_ are you _doing?_ "

"Is Opal up there?"

The obvious answer is _no_ , but the obvious question is, _why would Opal be in my apartment?_

Because Ronan doesn't know where she is.

Because Opal isn't at home.

Because Opal ran away.

"I'm coming down," Adam shouts.

He calls Persephone while cramming his feet into his shoes and grabbing his keys. It goes to voice mail as he sprints down the stairwell, that daydream dictator voice saying "I must not have my phone on me, do try to be patient."

The only message Adam could leave would be _I don't know what to do,_ but when he thinks about it he does know what he's going to do. He hangs up.

When he throws the front door open Ronan whirls around, eyes wide open in a full on _panic_ look. It makes it easy to pack aside his feelings, the annoyance and the fear and the horrible disgusting pleasure at the fact that Ronan remembers where he lives and came back to him, to pretend that this is any of his kids coming to him for help -- which is what this really is. This is for Opal.

"When did you see her last?" Adam asks.

"Fuck, I don't know." Ronan runs a hand over his head. "She came to mass with us, and then we were making lunch and I went to see if she would eat a sandwich like a normal person -- "

Adam could have told Ronan that Opal hates bread, but that is so far beyond the point that he doesn't even let himself roll his eyes.

" -- and I went into her room and the window was up with a fucking -- " Ronan makes a gesture that is probably supposed to indicate _rope for climbing down_ , but which really only looks unfortunate. "And I can't find her _anywhere_."

"Okay," Adam says. "Okay, we'll figure it out."

"There's no _we_ ," Ronan snaps. "I'm looking for my sister and if you don't have her then what the fuck good are you?"

"Hi, this isn't about you right now," Adam snaps back. "I'm worried about my friend. What happened at mass?"

"What are you talking about?"

"She's been fine living with you until she up and ran away -- "

Ronan growls, and yeah, Opal belongs with him, all right, if they can just figure out whatever this is that's happening now.

"She _ran away_ , are you going to waste time denying that? Do you think she was kidnapped? Do you want me to call the police?"

Ronan looks away.

" _Right_. So she ran away, and she seems like she's been getting along fine, so something happened, and if the last thing that happened was mass, what was that like?"

"Nothing, it was normal."

"She didn't get in a fight with your brothers?"

Ronan gestures, exasperated. "There's not a hell of a lot of fighting going on at church!"

"Yeah, I'm sure you've never managed to get into a fight in a church."

"Oh, fuck you," but it's a concession.

"What about your mom?" Adam asks.

Ronan's only answer is to look uneasy.

"What happened with your mom?"

"Dad died and mom fucking broke and I wasn't even around to help," Ronan snarls, "that's what _happened._ I came back from Ireland and she'd pulled herself together and she decided what she really needed was to foster kids, like she had all this fucking -- just, extra love sitting around that she had to do something with. Except it took years and fucking screening and classes and she didn't care, she just wanted to help, then the social worker brings Opal to our house and Opal takes one look at her and decides that she can't stand her."

Opal has never talked during the meeting part of meeting; Adam doesn't know what her wounds look like. He thinks about the way that she bucks against Ronan, refuses to get in the car at the end of meeting when he tells her to, and how she'd never done that when it was Ronan's mom picking her up. it could look, from one angle, like she didn't like Ronan enough to listen to him, except Adam knew that wasn't true; so what did it mean, that she wouldn't argue with his mom?

"If she doesn't want to go back to your home, I'm not going to make her."

"It's not your fucking call. It's not even your fucking business."

"Then why are you here? "

"Because Opal thinks you're Jesus Fucking Christ, I thought she'd go to you if she went to anyone."

Adam burns, pride at hearing Opal likes him, shame that she didn't, in fact, come to him when she needed him. Except --

"She doesn't know where I live. I've only ever seen her at meetings."

"I _checked_ the rec center, I'm not an idiot," but Adam is barely listening. As much as Persephone believes the kids look up to him, it's not like they know how to find him. They only know the things that he's told them, about his parents, how he'd survived them, how he was going to go to college now, how that had been his goal since the field trip in middle school where they'd gone to the university and he'd decided that was it, that was what a better life looked like -- 

"The university. Get in the car, you're driving," Adam says, and it's definite enough that Ronan doesn't even question him.

They drive in silence, and Adam doesn't even mind. He's too busy trying to remember what he'd said. God, he hadn't even been talking to Opal, except that Opal was sitting next to him, like she often was, and Opal was listening, like she _always_ was, wary about everything that was happening around her. He'd been talking to Josie, because she'd just done that same field trip, she'd been overwhelmed about the gap from here to there, how she was supposed to get into college when she was still reading two levels below her grade, and Adam had said -- fuck, what was it? That he'd grown up thinking college wasn't for people like him, that he wouldn't be allowed in, but then he'd walked into the library and thought, well, anyone can go to a library.

"We'll check the libraries to start. Then the dorms, I guess," if she thought that he'd moved in already, she might have looked for him there. Fuck, it had to be such a big campus, didn't it? "If we haven't found her at that point we'll talk to campus security."

Ronan looks at him out of the corner of his eye but doesn't argue. Saving it for when he needs it, maybe; Adam doesn't flatter himself that he's won.

They don't need to have that argument, after all; Opal is in the first library they check, the big central location Adam had stepped into years ago and thought _there has to be a place here for me_. She's walking through the stacks, running fingers along the spines of books that are older than she is and nearly as heavy, such an incongruous sight that for a moment it's like seeing a ghost, _the orphan that haunts the library._

And then she looks up and sees them, and she runs over at Adam and throws her arms around his waist, solid and real and more contact than Adam had ever expected from her.

He rests a hand on her back, unsure how much contact he's allowed to return. That might be too much, or it might just be that she's seen Ronan, because she wiggles out of his grasp and runs up to Ronan to tug on his arm.

Ronan picks her up, so easy that it can't be the first time. She wraps her legs around him and rests her head on his shoulder, reverse piggy back ride, and he carries her outside like that, as nonchalant as though he airlifts runaways out of university libraries every day, though he does mutter to her, "Jesus Christ, kid, way to give me an aneurysm."

Adam catches Ronan's eye while Opal is still looking behind them, taps his chest once, _let me do the talking_.

Ronan scowls, but thinks it over, and nods at Adam, grudgingly, as they steps outside.

One nice thing about universities, they're full of places to sit down, actual parks, actual benches, and Ronan drops Opal down on one and sits next to her, Adam sitting on the other side.

"Opal," he starts. "We need to talk about why you're here."

She sighs loudly. Adam wants so badly for this to work out, because she absolutely deserves Ronan Lynch for a brother.

"If you don't feel safe with the Lynches I'll stay with you right here. We'll get Persephone or your social worker to come pick you up."

Ronan glares at him over Opal's head, outraged and betrayed, but if Opal still listens, alert to every sound around her, then Adam's own hyper-vigilance looks like this: that no one is above suspicion, that trust has to be earned and the price is so dear that no one has managed to pay it yet.

Opal shakes her head.

"Okay." Adam forces himself to relax back against the bench. "We can stay right here for a while and it'll just be the three of us, okay?"

She nods.

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a multi-tool, hands it to Opal to play with. It's a cheap trick, keeping your hands busy while your brain deals with something tough, but it works. She starts pulling all the parts of it out, fascinated.

"Sundays are family time, right?" She nods, squeezing the mini scissors open and shut, open and shut, like a hungry mouth. "You and Ronan I know. Was Matthew there?" She nods again. "What about Declan?"

"Declan's a shitfuck," she says.

"Watch your fucking language," Ronan says.

"You say it all the time."

"I'm a billion years older than you, I can say anything I want."

"That's not fair." Opal scowls, a hideous exaggerated face like a stone gargoyle. "You're always going to be older than me."

"I'm a billion years older than you, I don't need to be fair," Ronan says.

Opal stabs at him with the multi-tool, but it's only a feint, doesn't come close to him, and she's holding it bottle opener outwards, so Adam isn't worried.

"Are his brothers as weird as he is?" he asks her.

She goes back to flicking the bottle opener against her knuckles. "No one's as weird as Ronan."

"Yeah, sounds about right." He grins at Ronan before he remembers all of the reasons he's not allowed to do that. But Opal's here and safe and making fun of her foster family. Adam figures the universe can spare him one smile in all of that goodness.

"Is that why you left," he asks, "because Declan was being a shitfuck?"

Opal shakes her head. She's gotten the mini screwdriver out, now, and is scraping away at the screws in the bench, trying to undo them.

"What about Ronan's mom? I've never met her, what's she like?"

Opal falls still, as unmoving as death, and Ronan on the other side of the bench mirroring her. This is it, this is what it's about, and it hurts Adam to think that Ronan was right about this, that she's rejecting her foster mother.

And then Opal says, "she's too nice."

He breathes, filters out all of the confusion and surprise in his voice. "What does too nice mean?"

"She doesn't get mad at me. _Ever_. She doesn't yell at me when I get mud on the carpet and she doesn't get mad when I leave my jacket at school and she didn't even get mad at me when I ripped open all of the fancy pillows on the couch." There's little tears forming in the corners of her eyes. She rubs at them, viciously.

"Well." Adam keeps his voice neutral as he can. "Ronan is a billion years older than you are, he's probably done all of those things already." He looks up at Ronan for confirmation. "Am I right?"

"They're really fucking ugly pillows."

"See? Of course she doesn't get mad. Nothing that you've done deserves getting mad over."

She shakes her head.

"Opal," and this time his voice is serious enough to make her look up, though she's sticking her bottom lip out mulishly when she does it. "You don't deserve to get yelled at."

"I don't like her," Opal says, words getting faster and louder as they spill out of her "I don't, I don't want to be like her -- I don't want to be nice, I want to be mad all the time."

"No one's mad all of the time."

" _I_ am, I'm going to be mad forever and I'm never going to forgive anyone."

 _Ah-ha_ , and it's like solving a depressing riddle. "Who told you that you had to forgive your family?"

"Everyone! My doctor and the priest and Mrs. Lynch and _I don't want to_!"

"It's okay," Adam tells her. "You don't have to."

She glares at him, suspicious.

"It's not real, Opal," he says, as gently as he can. "People want to believe that there's something that can make it okay after they hurt someone, because it makes them feel better about screwing up, but there isn't. They can say _sorry_ and you can say _I forgive you_ but it doesn't change anything. It doesn't make it stop hurting. It doesn't take your anger away from you. The only thing that does that is -- time. Good memories. Dinner with Persephone. Ronan teaching you words you're not supposed to say." Opal rubs at her eyes again. "You aren't going to be angry forever, I promise. That's all anyone's trying to promise you. People who haven't been hurt the way we've been hurt, they don't understand. They think there's more to it than that, but there isn't. It's just waiting until it stops hurting every day."

Opal thinks this over for a long time, multi-tool forgotten in hand. Ronan watches her like a hawk, intensity obvious even though Adam hasn't looked away from Opal to him.

Eventually she looks up and says, "okay."

"Okay." Adam smiles at her, not a big happy sunshine smile, but a tiny warm thing like a single candle. He watches as it catches onto Opal, tiny and flickering but real. "Do you want to go back to the Lynches' or stay here for a while?"

She stands up off the bench.

Ronan picks her up and carries her again. Adam thinks that's more for Ronan's comfort than hers. They get to the BMW and Ronan hands him the keys.

Adam feels an unexpected spike of anger, but under the circumstances he ignores it, climbs into the driver seat and adjusts the mirrors while Ronan sits with Opal on his lap and buckles the seat belt over both of them. Adam drives very, very carefully along the route that Ronan dictates to him.

Ronan's mom is standing on the porch when they arrive, talking to someone that Adam assumes from context is Shitfuck Declan. Adam would have expected a foster mother whose ward ran away to look either distraught or -- cynical thought, honest thought -- untouched. Ronan's mother is neither; there's worry on her face, but she makes it look as glamorous as anything else. Adam figures that putting yourself back together after the death of a spouse could give one a certain fortitude.

Opal squares her shoulders, her own fortitude beyond question, and walks up the stairs to the porch.

Ronan's mom crouches down to speak to her, putting their eyes level. Adam can't make out what she says. Opal says something back to her, voice even lower, and when Ronan's mom offers her a hand Opal throws her arms out, hugs her and then breaks free just as suddenly and runs inside. Ronan's mom follows, Declan on her heels making a phone call.

Adam leaves the keys on the driver's seat. It's not like Ronan ever locks his car anyway. Ronan has been watching the reunion, too, and Adam figures he'll follow the rest of his family inside and then Adam will walk out to the main drag and try to catch a bus back to his neighborhood.

Instead Ronan just stands, motionless, watching the house, and when Adam starts to walk away he says, "You're so full of shit, Parrish."

"Sure, right, that's new." Adam rubs his forehead. When did he get a headache? "What did I do this time?"

"Forgiveness."

Adam whirls around, livid. He owes Ronan, but not _that_ , Ronan doesn't get to poke at _that_.

Ronan's looking at him now, a fierce spark in his eyes. He wants to pick a fight, all right. "Not your parents, Opal's parents, they're fucking monsters and they don't deserve it," which isn't the thing Adam was expecting Ronan to say, and certainly not in that angry tone of voice. "That doesn't mean that no one gets it. You're not damaged goods for your whole fucking life just because you screwed up once."

"Right." Adam grins, mockingly. "So you forgive me, is that what you're saying?"

Ronan doesn't sound angry when he speaks again, just dull, worn out. "Why couldn't you have just asked me out for real?"

It saps the fire out of Adam's response.

"Who are you kidding, Ronan, I don't do that. I don't have any friends, I don't have any family. I was never trying to be close to anybody."

"You're so full of _shit_ ," Ronan snaps at him. "You adopted a dozen abused kids and you're still trying to pretend you're a fucking lone wolf who doesn't need anyone to like you -- "

"Of course I need people to like me," Adam shouts. "I wish _you_ still liked me because I was actually _happy_ when you did, and then I blew it. And I don't deserve it anymore, got it? That's how it _works_. But I have my kids. And." The words aren't coming out anymore, getting trapped in his throat, and he shrugs, miserably, buying time. "And classes are starting in a week, that's something. People make friends in college, right?"

"Right. Because you're suddenly going to become outgoing and social and love going to parties."

Adam shrugs again. He thought he'd already said goodbye to Ronan Lynch, but it turns out this is it for real, and it hurts so much more than he thought it ever could.

"Maybe there will be another boy who likes to climb onto roofs."

Ronan shuts his eyes and breathes. " _No_. I don't accept that. You shouldn't be fucking miserable anymore."

"I don't want you to pity me."

"I don't pity you, idiot, I finally understand you."

"Is the idiot necessary?"

"Yes, idiot." Ronan closes in on him, towers over him. "You hurt me and I forgive you and I'm not going to let you keep torturing yourself just because _you_ don't know how to get over anything."

Adam shuts his eyes, but it doesn't matter. He can still feel Ronan there, close enough to touch, except that he doesn't know how to do that.

He asks, "What do I _do?_ "

He can hear Ronan breathe, and it's all he can hear; it's like resuscitation, Ronan breathing life back into him when he hadn't even known it was missing.

"Just ask me out."

All he manages is " _Ronan_ ," but Ronan gets the rest of it, anyway.

-

Gansey and Cheng and Noah are all going to the East Coast for school, and there's a going away party the next week. Since it's a small affair arranged by Blue, not a kegger at Cheng's, Adam lets Ronan talk him into going, even though he's about forty percent convinced he's going to die of renewed shame the second that Ronan's friends see him.

He survives mostly because Ronan strolls into Gansey's house like nothing happened, only pausing briefly to point at Cheng and say, "You're still fucking dead to me" before walking on.

Even that makes it natural and easy for Adam to tell Cheng, "you look weirdly excited about being dead."

"Those are the first words he has spoken to me since graduation," Cheng inform him. "I count it as considerable progress."

It turns out that Noah has a bucket list of things to do before he leaves Seattle ("Are you -- not coming back to Seattle?" "No, I'll be back for Thanksgiving." "Then why -- " and then Cheng asks Noah if he's ever gone streaking, which isn't even a Seattle specific activity, but Adam's not going to hang around and argue the point and have to be _witness_ ). Crossing things off of the list takes up most of an afternoon and evening, driving around town, pulling weird stunts, occasionally running away from angry grown-ups. It's a completely bizarre ritual that Adam doesn't even have a word for until it occurs to him, _adolescence_ , and then it hurts like hell.

Ronan looks over at him from where Gansey is taking photos of Noah and Cheng and Blue atop the Fremont Troll.

Adam shrugs, because he doesn't know how to describe the way he's feeling. Or he does, but he also knows that he's been having an unexpectedly good time and he doesn't want to ruin it. He just wants -- a moment, maybe, to re-contextualize.

Ronan comes over to him and drapes himself over Adam from behind, like if a hug were lazy and inconvenient and uncomfortable and perfect.

"What the fuck's wrong with you?"

Adam turns his head, blows air in Ronan's face. "I like your friends."

"Yeah, that's definitely wrong."

Adam smiles. The moment finishes processing, tucks itself away in a drawer somewhere in his mind. He and Ronan watch as Noah takes a painful-looking slide down the Troll's face.

Gansey wanders over. Gansey has _definitely_ been coached by someone. Probably Blue, but Cheng is arrogant enough to have tried, and Ronan probably said something to the effect of _don't be a weirdo_. Come to think of it, Adam's pretty sure there's a whole conspiracy to Make Sure Gansey Doesn't Do Anything Weird Around Ronan's Boyfriend, because as much as he's been passed around the group today no one's given him a moment alone with Gansey.

Gansey will confront him sooner or later. Adam will get through it. The circumstances of his betrayal were pretty singular, and moreover, he knows now exactly how much he would hurt himself, if he did it again. In a screwed up twisty way, he's probably the safest boyfriend Ronan could choose, but that isn't the point. The point is this: that Ronan _did_ choose him. That Adam chose him back. That if he's still not sold on Ronan's _you're a good person because I say so so just shut up and deal with it_ approach to forgiveness, he's been given a second chance and he's not going to screw it up again. And that has to be enough. That is enough.

"So, Adam," Gansey says, and Adam raises an eyebrow like, _yes, who else would you be talking to?_ "Excited for college?

Ronan isn't going to the East Coast, isn't going to college; he's living with his mother, helping out with Matthew and Opal, conveniently staying right where he knows that Adam knows how to find him.

Adam works his last ever shift at the garage tomorrow, starts classes the day after that, has a group meeting the day after that.

"Yeah," he says, "I'm excited," and he lets Ronan drag him up to be with the rest of his friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're done! Man, turns out my muse takes much greater issue with the ending of this movie than I ever realized. Maybe Heath Ledger and Joseph Gordon-Levitt make anything look good. May I someday be as charismatic as they.
> 
> Thank you all for taking this journey with me. Posting in chapters instead of all at once has been _frightening_ , but you've been grand. You make me want to flash a teacher to get y'all out of detention.

**Author's Note:**

> If you like this fic, you can [reblog it on tumblr](http://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/174797313295/youre-just-too-good-to-be-true-chapter-1).


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